Easpa Géag

Fergal Hallahan, Irish News, December 29 2014 http://brianjohnspencer.tumblr.com/post/106510584063/primary-school-was-separate-in-the-south-as-here

We had one protestant in our year. She had to sit by herself at the back of the huge church while we spent ages practicing for communion.confirmation. Must of been boring as hell.

1: “The world” was a lot smaller when the book was published in 1964. Vast swathes of Europe was under Communist control, as was China and several African and South American countries. It’s unlikely that he’d have factored in dietary restrictions and no halal or kosher certifications means no sales in Muslim countries or amongst the Jewish diaspora. For practical as well as cultural reasons those in warmer climes tend to favour darker, richer chocolate than the standard milk chocolate Wonka bar shown in the movies. Similarly, Germans and Scandinavians like their chocolate even sweeter than the UK, and most favour the Swiss companies Nestle or Lindt. Even now European brands are something of a specialist item that needs to be imported to the US. It’s not unreasonable to assume that in the same year the Civil Rights Act was passed, only middle class, white suburbanites like Mike Teavee and Violet Beauregarde would even have had the access, let alone the disposable income, to eat Wonka bars. He can send them all over the world as much as he likes, but that doesn’t mean anyone actually bought them.

2: Given that Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is supposed to be funny, the idea of writing a book laughing at Black and Asian children being murdered and/or hideously mutilated as a result of their greed and ineptitude is, lets be honest, kind of uncomfortable.

3: Willy Wonka was an old man in the ambiguously set (but roughly contemporary) world of Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, so it’s pretty much a given that he would have had a significantly more ... Victorian outlook. After all, there is a very specific word for people who transport entire ethnic groups from Africa to the West for the purposes of cheap manual labour, no matter how much he tried to tart it up. Surely a man born in the 1890′s, who has no problem with human trafficking, either diddling the figures or flat out refusing to allow a black child to inherit his fortune is not beyond the realms of reality.

4: Road Dahl was a massive racist, and also grossly anti-Semitic.

Image: ‘Vikings’ will begin filming its fourth season in Ireland in late April (Credit: History Channel/YouTube)Vikings, the hugely successful History Channel production that is filmed in…

Like most good liberals, I was totally on board with transgender “liberation.” After all, it’s the next civil rights struggle, right? I’ve marched against war, racism, for health care, for women’s and gay and lesbian rights.  In the 1980s, I surfed the Second Wave of feminism, loving who I chose, dressing as I chose, speaking my mind, and living the life of equality first wavers like Susan B. Anthony, Charlotte Gilman, and Emma Goldman fought so hard for. I was a two-time election worker on President Obama’s campaigns. In the past couple of years, I celebrated as homophobic laws toppled, state by state, and gay marriage morphed into mainstream reality. And until recently, I’ve had the unexamined, vague conviction that the “T” in LGBT was part of the same good trend: more inclusion for the marginalized.

But that has all changed. I’ve shifted 270 degrees from the cookie-cutter progressive vantage point I inhabited only a few months ago. It’s not a 360 turnaround. I believe in civil rights for all people, and I don’t think trans people should face job, housing, or other discrimination. But I no longer see transgenderism as a liberation movement. From where I now stand, I see it as a profound and fundamentally conservative undermining of the gains of the Second Wave of feminism. It’s the Third Wave, a tsunami of narcissism, of post-modernist relativism run amok…a hall of mirrors, wave upon wave of shiny, YouTube transition videos and Tumblr confessions… where subjective feelings and ideas always trump physical reality.

Something has gone wrong. Very wrong. I’ve been asleep for 20 years, but now I’m waking up…because my own teenage daughter is being churned and tossed in this very turbulent sea.

When my daughter announced to me that she is transgender a few months ago, my initial reaction was basically positive—even though she had never before expressed an inkling of any such identity. In fact, she had always talked about how glad she was to be a girl. I’d raised her to feel that, like me, she could dress, act, or be anything she wanted to be and until very recently, that’s exactly what she did.

The change was abrupt. She admitted to binge-watching triumphant and ecstatic FTM transition videos for days on end. She started using jargon like “genderqueer.” But despite this turnaround, despite misgivings, I made an appointment with a gender therapist, ruminating on what it would mean to welcome a son into the erstwhile form of a daughter.

A researcher and scientist by profession and by avocation, I dived deeply into the Internet and medical literature on FTMs. And the more I read, talked, and emailed (and I delved a lot), the weaker my kneejerk-liberal “trans ally” position became.

I learned that everything I had taken for granted about women’s liberation has changed. A dislike of pink and traditionally (think: 1950s norms) female activities and interests now means a girl, a teen, is “actually” a boy.  Instead of acceptance if a girl wears denim and button-down shirts, that’s called by the archaic term “cross dressing” and the girl is pressured to “transition.” Gender role conformity is more rigid than ever, which is the great irony of transgenderism. Girls who used to find their home as “butch” lesbians don’t have anyone to identify with or look up to anymore. Women’s or lesbian bookstores, discussion groups, bars seem to have vanished from the face of the earth. Everything has been subsumed under the “queer” label.  And while nearly all FTMs start out as lesbians, they disavow it after beginning “transition.” They were never really lesbians, after all. They are really just crossdressers who yearn to be male.

And when it comes to “transition,” the holy grail, the magic elixir, is testosterone. It would be one thing if “T” could be used experimentally, then abandoned, with only temporary and reversible changes to the mind and body. Then you could say: Why not? Give it a try. But even a few weeks on “T” usually results in forever-thickened vocal cords, forever-thickened body and facial hair, and—by some accounts I’ve read—even brain changes that are hard to undo.  If a girl or woman transitions and changes her mind, she will forever live in a modified, androgen-altered body, whether she likes it later or not. Sterility is another risk. And many FTMs on long term hormone treatment are plagued by chronic infections, heart trouble, high blood pressure, premature aging.

That the frontal lobes of teenagers’ brains are not fully developed is now settled science, no more controversial than gravity or evolution.  We now know that executive function—judgment, impulse control, planning, and self monitoring skills—don’t reach maturity in young people until at least the age of 25. Yet the medical and psychological professions are allowing—no, they are pushing—surgical and pharmaceutical transition as the “answer” for teens who are questioning their identities. There’s a huge cognitive dissonance here: If adolescence is a time of limited executive function, how on earth can we be encouraging, let alone celebrating, such life-changing decisions being made by teen (and much younger) people?

How can it be that surgery and testosterone are now seen as the only viable solution to the feeling that a female doesn’t fit conventional gender stereotypes? What happened to: women can be anything they want to be? Shave your legs, don’t, cut your hair, don’t….love who you want, work on cars, have a child, don’t….that’s liberation as I’ve always understood it. But Second Wave feminism is considered stodgy and old fashioned now. Despite its fundamentally liberating message to women.

You can put liberation in inverted commas all you like but it doesn't change the facts. If we take the bog standard definition of liberation, that it involves equal rights and social and economic opportunities for a marginalised group, then I'm not quite sure how you can be sarcastic about it. Either you a) naively believe trans people already have this or b) that they don't deserve this. There are people living their lives as transgender, regardless of whether you believe the "phenomenon" exists or is an extension of/ escape for butch lesbianism, therefore to argue that social justice for these people is a waste of time is bigotry. 

To go backwards as well, "good liberals" immediately implies that everyone who believes in rights for trans people is toeing the party line - "ooh I'd be a bit of an old nasty nick if I brought up the fact that I think it's wrong" - believe me, there are plenty of people who are quite vocal about the subject. Believe what you want, but please don't trivialise the beliefs of the rest of us, including your child, in the process. I'd also question how "on board" you really were. 

I mean "on board" in itself is a non-committal phrase but as it transpires the second you did the most basic of research into the topic you were vehemently opposed to the idea. Is this not more a case of "I didn't need to think about it, so I didn't?"

Nice use of syndetic listing to make it seem like you've done more. Kudos.

Okay, we get it. You're an all round stellar person. Good for you. You've also enjoyed the benefits of female liberation yourself. Smashing. I'd note that your marching against war didn't actually make any difference to the Iraqis who were actually affected by it, not to mention every Muslim living in the western world but yeah. Good. 

 I'm also still failing to see how more inclusion for the marginalised is a bad thing, again regardless of whether you believe those marginalised actually exist or not.

That is very big of you. You shall receive ally of the year 2015. I mean, you'll endorse  even more restriction of access to medical provision which would have dire consequences but you wouldn't actively punch anyone in the face. A true saint.

And, as a pedantic point, where you now stand? You mean in the same spot but facing west instead of north, right?

Just from a language point of view here, this is rather marvellous. Your lexical choices of "tsunami" suggesting an enormous, foreign, unpredictable and indiscriminate destructive force coupled with "wave upon wave of shiny" (keeping with the natural disaster theme, nice) to trivialise the benefits, creates an incredibly emotive argument. Referencing YouTube and Tumblr (which, by the way, are your only two named sources) in the context of your entire page essentially shitting all over anyone under the age of 25, where the markets of said services are largely young adults inherently discredits the validity of this anecdotal evidence to your typical audience. The idea that we, THE YOUTH OF TODAY, have "run amok" with your excellent 2nd wave ideas and SPOILT IT FOR EVERYONE is pretty much your thesis. I'd imagine a fair few first wavers had the same response back in those halcyon days you remember. Would you argue that feminism has already triumphed and we need no more nuance? You clearly wouldn't as you're calling for a fourth wave - but a fourth wave defined by older, white, non-trans (seeing as you're averse to the word c*s) women - not one defined by those who haven't already established themselves in the world and face the prejudices it now holds. Basically - we know best, listen to your elders, shut up and lump it.

Squeamishness I understand - don't worry. I teach kids born in the year 2002 and they've got some crackpot ideas! What happened to pogs? It's all Playstation DSes and "no miss, racism is bad!" these days. But it doesn't mean their point of view isn't valid. Was any of the good you've done in the world undertaken before the (by all accounts that I can find, relatively superfluous) age of 25? Do you still have the courage of those convictions now or have you COMPLETELY CHANGED YOUR VIEW ON EVERYTHING EVER?

And yes, feelings are subjective but if we only ever relied on "physical reality", as you endorse, we'd be stuffed pretty quickly. That diagnosis for mental illness? Nope, soz. A fire safety check on your house? Well, is it actually on fire yet? No? Then it ain't a physical reality, sorry! Show me a literal glass ceiling and I'll smash it, otherwise tis just conjecture! You don't recognise these arguments resurfacing from somewhere?

Oh no! Not just wrong! Very wrong! Quick! Man the barricades!

So you, as an over-25-year-old made a mistake? Are you sure?

And the tsunami thing has now become an extended metaphor, that's almost impressive. You've managed to posit current feminism as a vast, unforgiving, senseless mass where women are hurled just like in the days of pirates and big old octopuses what we don't understand! Even when it's not measurably attacking our nice, safe land as tsunamis, it's there... Just waiting to strike. It's a good job really, that it doesn't know what it wants, because if it did it'd clearly orchestrate an attack on friendly, old feminist blue whales (that's me using a metaphor, I can do it too. You're the blue whale).

"Announced" as a verb is an interesting choice and however subconsciously tells a reader a lot about how you feel about it. I don't know, but based on an admittedly small amount of knowledge of coming out, it rarely tends to be a flags out, banners up PSA. Usually it's preceded by a large amount of soul searching and hand wringing guilt. Fear of rejection etc etc. You clearly felt here as though your child had not involved you in the process and it was a bolt from the blue, which you in no uncertain terms state yourself - y'know, as if they were suddenly appearing and shouting "DEAL WITH ME AS I AM OR SCREW YOU". Which do you feel is more likely? That this is a big deal to do with their identity and your expectations of them or that they were trying to spite you?

On a positive note though you've used the verb "is" rather than "was" which would suggest you consider it, however subconsciously, a more constant and ongoing state.

Well, that was good of you. Sadly you haven't sustained any level of respect by using female pronouns throughout this and then discussing your child (presumably without their consent) on the internet. My mum read my diary and I was pissed. If she'd have done that, I'd pretty much have disowned her. Just as a genuine piece of advice from a lesbian daughter of a disapproving mother, tread carefully. Presumably they told you because they either a) believed the best of you and trust you want nothing but happiness for them or b) they respect you enough to include you in their life decisions. 

Your use of the adverb "basically"'also leads me to question what you mean by positive. Like... "Have you done your homework?" "Basically, yes" "what does that mean?" "Well, I sat and stared at the sheet for an hour then had a wank."

So how would you classify coming out? Something they didn't want to do? Or something you believe they don't understand and that you didn't want to happen?

I dunno, admitting to "binge-watching" sounds inherently shady and dishonest. Like binge drinkers hiding bottles in the toilet cistern. An uncontrollable and guilt-ridden addiction, even. It's not. YouTube videos, and internet sources in general, are pretty much any young person's start point to finding themselves represented elsewhere when they feel a disconnect with the world. I'm not going to cast aspersions as to whether your child is actually trans or not - if they've said so the likelihood is that they are but neither you nor I am in any position to speculate as to their identity, really - but you've automatically attached shame to this.

This is also not a causal event - one has to look up what one wants to watch on YouTube, it's not like the telly where you just turn it on and see what's kicking. Even if these videos were recommended, that would suggest your child had more than a passing interest in transgender issues. Even so, indoctrination by YouTube videos? Really? It doesn't seems massively plausible.

"Triumphant and ecstatic" are also loaded adjectives. You make it sound like people are revelling in their transition - trans propaganda, if you will - rather than celebrating finally feeling at ease with their identity. I mean, I can't say for sure, seeing as how you don't link to any sources, but ecstatic has connotations of a diminished mental state for making decisions and therefore making them based on Freud's Id impulses.

Well... As jargon goes it's a fairly self explanatory one. It serves its purpose in your argument in that it makes “trans” sound like a cult and an agenda in itself but, really, you just mean terminology because there is no other word for genderqueer and it doesn’t serve to obfuscate the meaning.

It...doesn't mean that.

Ahh yes! I remember it well! I'm wearing a checked shirt right now and... What's that? Oh! The doorbell! No, thank you for your kind offer, man with syringe full of testosterone, I don't want it. Thanks, though. Christ, this happens all the time.

Alongside every other book shop, discussion group and bar due to the recession and disintegration of independent businesses and community spaces to hold events. A situation you personally (and proudly!) helped bring into existence with your staunch campaigning for political parties.

4thwavenow: 

And while nearly all FTMs start out as lesbians, they disavow it after beginning “transition.” They were never really lesbians, after all. They are really just crossdressers who yearn to be male.

4thwavenow: 

And when it comes to “transition,” the holy grail, the magic elixir, is testosterone. It would be one thing if “T” could be used experimentally, then abandoned, with only temporary and reversible changes to the mind and body. Then you could say: Why not? Give it a try. But even a few weeks on “T” usually results in forever-thickened vocal cords, forever-thickened body and facial hair, and—by some accounts I’ve read—even brain changes that are hard to undo.  If a girl or woman transitions and changes her mind, she will forever live in a modified, androgen-altered body, whether she likes it later or not. Sterility is another risk. And many FTMs on long term hormone treatment are plagued by chronic infections, heart trouble, high blood pressure, premature aging.

Oh yeah, there are definitely health concerns. Especially if you're worrying about your child, I totally sympathise but you're presenting only one side of the argument here. You don't say to what degree any of these will happen - what's more likely, the mildly annoying thickened facial hair or the terrifying but unspecified “brain changes”? Similarly, what are the options for trans people if they are prevented from transitioning?

I chose the school subjects that would determine the rest of my life at 13, at 14 I had a job in a doctors surgery as well as babysitting other people's children in the evening, I went on the pill at 17, the same year I learned to drive, I chose my career at 19, at 20 I was a full time teacher in charge of 30 children at any one time as well as their future prospects and behaviour. 

I was not given the option of adult-life-putter-offers when I wasn't sure about every single one of those decisions. Hormone blockers, which are what's offered to young people, offer time to do this, and that's assuming there is uncertainty.

Women CAN be anything they want to be! It’s just that trans men are not women.

Like most good liberals, I was totally on board with transgender “liberation.” After all, it’s the next civil rights struggle, right? I’ve marched against war, racism, for health care, for women’s and gay and lesbian rights.  In the 1980s, I surfed the Second Wave of feminism, loving who I chose, dressing as I chose, speaking my mind, and living the life of equality first wavers like Susan B. Anthony, Charlotte Gilman, and Emma Goldman fought so hard for. I was a two-time election worker on President Obama’s campaigns. In the past couple of years, I celebrated as homophobic laws toppled, state by state, and gay marriage morphed into mainstream reality. And until recently, I’ve had the unexamined, vague conviction that the “T” in LGBT was part of the same good trend: more inclusion for the marginalized.

But that has all changed. I’ve shifted 270 degrees from the cookie-cutter progressive vantage point I inhabited only a few months ago. It’s not a 360 turnaround. I believe in civil rights for all people, and I don’t think trans people should face job, housing, or other discrimination. But I no longer see transgenderism as a liberation movement. From where I now stand, I see it as a profound and fundamentally conservative undermining of the gains of the Second Wave of feminism. It’s the Third Wave, a tsunami of narcissism, of post-modernist relativism run amok…a hall of mirrors, wave upon wave of shiny, YouTube transition videos and Tumblr confessions… where subjective feelings and ideas always trump physical reality.

Something has gone wrong. Very wrong. I’ve been asleep for 20 years, but now I’m waking up…because my own teenage daughter is being churned and tossed in this very turbulent sea.

When my daughter announced to me that she is transgender a few months ago, my initial reaction was basically positive—even though she had never before expressed an inkling of any such identity. In fact, she had always talked about how glad she was to be a girl. I’d raised her to feel that, like me, she could dress, act, or be anything she wanted to be and until very recently, that’s exactly what she did.

The change was abrupt. She admitted to binge-watching triumphant and ecstatic FTM transition videos for days on end. She started using jargon like “genderqueer.” But despite this turnaround, despite misgivings, I made an appointment with a gender therapist, ruminating on what it would mean to welcome a son into the erstwhile form of a daughter.

A researcher and scientist by profession and by avocation, I dived deeply into the Internet and medical literature on FTMs. And the more I read, talked, and emailed (and I delved a lot), the weaker my kneejerk-liberal “trans ally” position became.

I learned that everything I had taken for granted about women’s liberation has changed. A dislike of pink and traditionally (think: 1950s norms) female activities and interests now means a girl, a teen, is “actually” a boy.  Instead of acceptance if a girl wears denim and button-down shirts, that’s called by the archaic term “cross dressing” and the girl is pressured to “transition.” Gender role conformity is more rigid than ever, which is the great irony of transgenderism. Girls who used to find their home as “butch” lesbians don’t have anyone to identify with or look up to anymore. Women’s or lesbian bookstores, discussion groups, bars seem to have vanished from the face of the earth. Everything has been subsumed under the “queer” label.  And while nearly all FTMs start out as lesbians, they disavow it after beginning “transition.” They were never really lesbians, after all. They are really just crossdressers who yearn to be male.

And when it comes to “transition,” the holy grail, the magic elixir, is testosterone. It would be one thing if “T” could be used experimentally, then abandoned, with only temporary and reversible changes to the mind and body. Then you could say: Why not? Give it a try. But even a few weeks on “T” usually results in forever-thickened vocal cords, forever-thickened body and facial hair, and—by some accounts I’ve read—even brain changes that are hard to undo.  If a girl or woman transitions and changes her mind, she will forever live in a modified, androgen-altered body, whether she likes it later or not. Sterility is another risk. And many FTMs on long term hormone treatment are plagued by chronic infections, heart trouble, high blood pressure, premature aging.

That the frontal lobes of teenagers’ brains are not fully developed is now settled science, no more controversial than gravity or evolution.  We now know that executive function—judgment, impulse control, planning, and self monitoring skills—don’t reach maturity in young people until at least the age of 25. Yet the medical and psychological professions are allowing—no, they are pushing—surgical and pharmaceutical transition as the “answer” for teens who are questioning their identities. There’s a huge cognitive dissonance here: If adolescence is a time of limited executive function, how on earth can we be encouraging, let alone celebrating, such life-changing decisions being made by teen (and much younger) people?

How can it be that surgery and testosterone are now seen as the only viable solution to the feeling that a female doesn’t fit conventional gender stereotypes? What happened to: women can be anything they want to be? Shave your legs, don’t, cut your hair, don’t….love who you want, work on cars, have a child, don’t….that’s liberation as I’ve always understood it. But Second Wave feminism is considered stodgy and old fashioned now. Despite its fundamentally liberating message to women.

Like most good liberals, I was totally on board with transgender “liberation.” After all, it’s the next civil rights struggle, right? I’ve marched against war, racism, for health care, for women’s and gay and lesbian rights.  In the 1980s, I surfed the Second Wave of feminism, loving who I chose, dressing as I chose, speaking my mind, and living the life of equality first wavers like Susan B. Anthony,Charlotte Gilman, and Emma Goldman fought so hard for. I was a two-timeelection worker on President Obama’s campaigns. In the past couple of years, I celebratedas homophobic laws toppled, state by state, and gay marriage morphed into mainstreamreality. And until recently, I’ve had the unexamined, vague conviction that the“T” in LGBT was part of the same good trend: more inclusion for themarginalized.

But that has all changed. I’ve shifted 270 degrees from the cookie-cutterprogressive vantage point I inhabited only a few months ago. It’s not a 360turnaround. I believe in civil rights for all people, and I don’t think trans people should face job, housing, or other discrimination. But I no longer see transgenderism as a liberation movement. From where I now stand, I see it as a profound and fundamentally conservative undermining of the gains of the Second Wave of feminism. It’s the Third Wave, a tsunami of narcissism, of post-modernist relativism run amok…a hall of mirrors, wave upon wave of shiny, YouTube transition videos and Tumblr confessions… where subjective feelings and ideas always trump physical reality.

Something has gone wrong. Very wrong. I’ve been asleep for 20 years, but now I’m waking up…because my own teenage daughter is being churned and tossed in this very turbulent sea.

When my daughter announced to me that she is transgender a few months ago, my initial reaction was basically positive—even though she had never before expressed an inkling of any such identity. In fact, she had always talked about how glad she was to be a girl. I’d raised her to feel that, like me, she could dress, act, or be anything she wanted to be and until very recently, that’s exactly what she did.

The change was abrupt. She admitted to binge-watching triumphant and ecstatic FTM transition videos for days on end. She started using jargon like “genderqueer.” But despite this turnaround, despite misgivings, I made an appointment with a gender therapist, ruminating on what it would mean to welcome a son into the erstwhile form of a daughter.

A researcher and scientist by profession and by avocation, I dived deeply into the Internet and medical literature on FTMs. And the more I read, talked, and emailed (and I delved a lot), the weaker my kneejerk-liberal “trans ally” position became.

I learned that everything I had taken for granted about women’s liberation has changed. A dislike of pink and traditionally (think: 1950s norms) female activities and interests now means a girl, a teen, is “actually” a boy.  Instead of acceptance if a girl wears denim and button-down shirts, that’s called by the archaic term “cross dressing” and the girl is pressured to “transition.” Gender role conformity is more rigid than ever, which is the great irony of transgenderism. Girls who used to find their home as “butch” lesbians don’t have anyone to identify with or look up to anymore. Women’s or lesbian bookstores, discussion groups, bars seem to have vanished from the face of the earth. Everything has been subsumed under the “queer” label.  And while nearly all FTMs start out as lesbians, they disavow it after beginning “transition.” They were never really lesbians, after all. They are really just crossdressers who yearn to be male.

And when it comes to “transition,” the holy grail, the magic elixir, is testosterone. It would be one thing if “T” could be used experimentally, then abandoned, with only temporary and reversible changes to the mind and body. Then you could say: Why not? Give it a try. But even a few weeks on “T” usually results in forever-thickened vocal cords, forever-thickened body and facial hair, and—by some accounts I’ve read—even brain changes that are hard to undo.  If a girl or woman transitions and changes her mind, she will forever live in a modified, androgen-altered body, whether she likes it later or not. Sterility is another risk. And many FTMs on long term hormone treatment are plagued by chronic infections, heart trouble, high blood pressure, premature aging.

That the frontal lobes of teenagers’ brains are not fully developed is now settled science, no more controversial than gravity or evolution.  We now know that executive function—judgment, impulse control, planning, and self monitoring skills—don’t reach maturity in young people until at least the age of 25. Yet the medical and psychological professions are allowing—no, they are pushing—surgical and pharmaceutical transition as the “answer” for teens who are questioning their identities. There’s a huge cognitive dissonance here: If adolescence is a time of limited executive function, how on earth can we be encouraging, let alone celebrating, such life-changing decisions being made by teen (and much younger) people?

How can it be that surgery and testosterone are now seen as the only viable solution to the feeling that a female doesn’t fit conventional gender stereotypes? What happened to: women can be anything they want to be? Shave your legs, don’t, cut your hair, don’t….love who you want, work on cars, have a child, don’t….that’s liberation as I’ve always understood it. But Second Wave feminism is considered stodgy and old fashioned now. Despite its fundamentally liberating message to women.

Woman's demand for equal suffrage is based largely on the contention that woman must have the equal right in all affairs of society.  No one could, possibly, refute that, if suffrage were a right.  Alas, for the ignorance of the human mind, which can see a right in an imposition.  Or is it not the most brutal imposition for one set of people to make laws that another set is coerced by force to obey? Yet woman clamors for that "golden opportunity" that has wrought so much misery in the world, and robbed man of his integrity and self-reliance; an imposition which has thoroughly corrupted the people, and made them absolute prey in the hands of unscrupulous politicians.

There are more descriptive paragraphs I could have copy and pasted, but ultimately I chose to go with the one that contains one of the most famous quotes attributed to her.

Then of course there’s the irony of Charlotte Gilman - your other favourite thinker - writing an incredably famous, semi auto-biographical, short story about a close family member denying them autonomy over their healthcare, on the grounds that they couldn’t possibly understand their own mind well enough to make their own medical choices.

I must admit to being quite perturbed by your frequent references to The Second Wave as an actual, concrete movement, rather than a broad grouping of ideologies that covers everything from Bettie Freidan refusing to discuss race, sexual violence, prostitution or lesbians because it distracted from the important goal of getting women in the work force, right up to Valerie Solanis’ somewhat more ... stabby aims. I presume what you’re you’re referring to is Radical Feminism, which is again ironic given your refusal to acknowledge the word TERF, coined by a Radical Feminist who goes by the name TigTog to distinguish between two Radical Feminist conferences, one which included trans women and one which didn’t.

Also - and stop me if I’m going too fast here - this is a circle:

As you can see, “a 360 turnaround” is just that, one full rotation. As in you wound up pointing in exactly the same direction you started from. It’s a 180° about turn that would indicate you have, either literally or metaphorically, turned your back on your previous position.

Finally, FtM and genderqueer are two separate, discrete categories, much like lesbian and bisexual. While these terms can be, and often are, lumped together as part of a broader whole (in this case, “trans” and “gay”, respectively), this is only to highlight common goals and concerns, not conflate them. They remain discrete individual groups and the terms can’t be used interchangeably.

Like most good liberals, I was totally on board with transgender “liberation.” After all, it’s the next civil rights struggle, right? I’ve marched against war, racism, for health care, for women’s and gay and lesbian rights.  In the 1980s, I surfed the Second Wave of feminism, loving who I chose, dressing as I chose, speaking my mind, and living the life of equality first wavers like Susan B. Anthony, Charlotte Gilman, and Emma Goldman fought so hard for. I was a two-time election worker on President Obama’s campaigns. In the past couple of years, I celebrated as homophobic laws toppled, state by state, and gay marriage morphed into mainstream reality. And until recently, I’ve had the unexamined, vague conviction that the “T” in LGBT was part of the same good trend: more inclusion for the marginalized.

But that has all changed. I’ve shifted 270 degrees from the cookie-cutter progressive vantage point I inhabited only a few months ago. It’s not a 360 turnaround. I believe in civil rights for all people, and I don’t think trans people should face job, housing, or other discrimination. But I no longer see transgenderism as a liberation movement. From where I now stand, I see it as a profound and fundamentally conservative undermining of the gains of the Second Wave of feminism. It’s the Third Wave, a tsunami of narcissism, of post-modernist relativism run amok…a hall of mirrors, wave upon wave of shiny, YouTube transition videos and Tumblr confessions… where subjective feelings and ideas always trump physical reality.

Something has gone wrong. Very wrong. I’ve been asleep for 20 years, but now I’m waking up…because my own teenage daughter is being churned and tossed in this very turbulent sea.

When my daughter announced to me that she is transgender a few months ago, my initial reaction was basically positive—even though she had never before expressed an inkling of any such identity. In fact, she had always talked about how glad she was to be a girl. I’d raised her to feel that, like me, she could dress, act, or be anything she wanted to be and until very recently, that’s exactly what she did.

The change was abrupt. She admitted to binge-watching triumphant and ecstatic FTM transition videos for days on end. She started using jargon like “genderqueer.” But despite this turnaround, despite misgivings, I made an appointment with a gender therapist, ruminating on what it would mean to welcome a son into the erstwhile form of a daughter.

A researcher and scientist by profession and by avocation, I dived deeply into the Internet and medical literature on FTMs. And the more I read, talked, and emailed (and I delved a lot), the weaker my kneejerk-liberal “trans ally” position became.

I learned that everything I had taken for granted about women’s liberation has changed. A dislike of pink and traditionally (think: 1950s norms) female activities and interests now means a girl, a teen, is “actually” a boy.  Instead of acceptance if a girl wears denim and button-down shirts, that’s called by the archaic term “cross dressing” and the girl is pressured to “transition.” Gender role conformity is more rigid than ever, which is the great irony of transgenderism. Girls who used to find their home as “butch” lesbians don’t have anyone to identify with or look up to anymore. Women’s or lesbian bookstores, discussion groups, bars seem to have vanished from the face of the earth. Everything has been subsumed under the “queer” label.  And while nearly all FTMs start out as lesbians, they disavow it after beginning “transition.” They were never really lesbians, after all. They are really just crossdressers who yearn to be male.

And when it comes to “transition,” the holy grail, the magic elixir, is testosterone. It would be one thing if “T” could be used experimentally, then abandoned, with only temporary and reversible changes to the mind and body. Then you could say: Why not? Give it a try. But even a few weeks on “T” usually results in forever-thickened vocal cords, forever-thickened body and facial hair, and—by some accounts I’ve read—even brain changes that are hard to undo.  If a girl or woman transitions and changes her mind, she will forever live in a modified, androgen-altered body, whether she likes it later or not. Sterility is another risk. And many FTMs on long term hormone treatment are plagued by chronic infections, heart trouble, high blood pressure, premature aging.

That the frontal lobes of teenagers’ brains are not fully developed is now settled science, no more controversial than gravity or evolution.  We now know that executive function—judgment, impulse control, planning, and self monitoring skills—don’t reach maturity in young people until at least the age of 25. Yet the medical and psychological professions are allowing—no, they are pushing—surgical and pharmaceutical transition as the “answer” for teens who are questioning their identities. There’s a huge cognitive dissonance here: If adolescence is a time of limited executive function, how on earth can we be encouraging, let alone celebrating, such life-changing decisions being made by teen (and much younger) people?

How can it be that surgery and testosterone are now seen as the only viable solution to the feeling that a female doesn’t fit conventional gender stereotypes? What happened to: women can be anything they want to be? Shave your legs, don’t, cut your hair, don’t….love who you want, work on cars, have a child, don’t….that’s liberation as I’ve always understood it. But Second Wave feminism is considered stodgy and old fashioned now. Despite its fundamentally liberating message to women.

At which point does that not apply to The Pill?

Might I also remind you that The Pill is available after a single, brief consultation, which the doctor is legally prohibited from informing parents about, and in many civilised countries with socialised healthcare, available for free. Hell, you can get emergency contraception over the counter!

Unlike T, which cannot be administered to a minor without parental consent, requires a minimum of one year of therapy and several medical consultations, before at least one doctor and a psychiatrist have to sign off on the treatment, and necessitates fairly regular check ups for blood work in order to maintain a healthy (and effective) balance of hormones.

Like most good liberals, I was totally on board with transgender “liberation.” After all, it’s the next civil rights struggle, right? I’ve marched against war, racism, for health care, for women’s and gay and lesbian rights.  In the 1980s, I surfed the Second Wave of feminism, loving who I chose, dressing as I chose, speaking my mind, and living the life of equality first wavers like Susan B. Anthony,Charlotte Gilman, and Emma Goldman fought so hard for. I was a two-time election worker on President Obama’s campaigns. In the past couple of years, I celebrated as homophobic laws toppled, state by state, and gay marriage morphed into mainstream reality. And until recently, I’ve had the unexamined, vague conviction that the “T” in LGBT was part of the same good trend: more inclusion for the marginalized.

But that has all changed. I’ve shifted 270 degrees from the cookie-cutter progressive vantage point I inhabited only a few months ago. It’s not a 360 turnaround. I believe in civil rights for all people, and I don’t think trans people should face job, housing, or other discrimination. But I no longer see transgenderism as a liberation movement. From where I now stand, I see it as a profound and fundamentally conservative undermining of the gains of the Second Wave of feminism. It’s the Third Wave, a tsunami of narcissism, of post-modernist relativism run amok…a hall of mirrors, wave upon wave of shiny, YouTube transition videos and Tumblr confessions… where subjective feelings and ideas always trump physical reality.

Something has gone wrong. Very wrong. I’ve been asleep for 20 years, but now I’m waking up…because my own teenage daughter is being churned and tossed in this very turbulent sea.

When my daughter announced to me that she is transgender a few months ago, my initial reaction was basically positive—even though she had never before expressed an inkling of any such identity. In fact, she had always talked about how glad she was to be a girl. I’d raised her to feel that, like me, she could dress, act, or be anything she wanted to be and until very recently, that’s exactly what she did.

The change was abrupt. She admitted to binge-watching triumphant and ecstatic FTM transition videos for days on end. She started using jargon like “genderqueer.” But despite this turnaround, despite misgivings, I made an appointment with a gender therapist, ruminating on what it would mean to welcome a son into the erstwhile form of a daughter.

A researcher and scientist by profession and by avocation, I dived deeply into the Internet and medical literature on FTMs. And the more I read, talked, and emailed (and I delved a lot), the weaker my kneejerk-liberal “trans ally” position became.

I learned that everything I had taken for granted about women’s liberation has changed. A dislike of pink and traditionally (think: 1950s norms) female activities and interests now means a girl, a teen, is “actually” a boy.  Instead of acceptance if a girl wears denim and button-down shirts, that’s called by the archaic term “cross dressing” and the girl is pressured to “transition.” Gender role conformity is more rigid than ever, which is the great irony of transgenderism. Girls who used to find their home as “butch” lesbians don’t have anyone to identify with or look up to anymore. Women’s or lesbian bookstores, discussion groups, bars seem to have vanished from the face of the earth. Everything has been subsumed under the “queer” label.  And while nearly all FTMs start out as lesbians, they disavow it after beginning “transition.” They were never really lesbians, after all. They are really just crossdressers who yearn to be male.

And when it comes to “transition,” the holy grail, the magic elixir, is testosterone. It would be one thing if “T” could be used experimentally, then abandoned, with only temporary and reversible changes to the mind and body. Then you could say: Why not? Give it a try. But even a few weeks on “T” usually results in forever-thickened vocal cords, forever-thickened body and facial hair, and—by some accounts I’ve read—even brain changes that are hard to undo.  If a girl or woman transitions and changes her mind, she will forever live in a modified, androgen-altered body, whether she likes it later or not. Sterility is another risk. And many FTMs on long term hormone treatment are plagued by chronic infections, heart trouble, high blood pressure, premature aging.

That the frontal lobes of teenagers’ brains are not fully developed is now settled science, no more controversial than gravity or evolution.  We now know that executive function—judgment, impulse control, planning, and self monitoring skills—don’t reach maturity in young people until at least the age of 25. Yet the medical and psychological professions are allowing—no, they are pushing—surgical and pharmaceutical transition as the “answer” for teens who are questioning their identities. There’s a huge cognitive dissonance here: If adolescence is a time of limited executive function, how on earth can we be encouraging, let alone celebrating, such life-changing decisions being made by teen (and much younger) people?

How can it be that surgery and testosterone are now seen as the only viable solution to the feeling that a female doesn’t fit conventional gender stereotypes? What happened to: women can be anything they want to be? Shave your legs, don’t, cut your hair, don’t….love who you want, work on cars, have a child, don’t….that’s liberation as I’ve always understood it. But Second Wave feminism is considered stodgy and old fashioned now. Despite its fundamentally liberating message to women.

By “casually” dropping your experience as a scientist and researcher into this post you’re adding an unearned weight of authority to your words. By opening this with a list of your political accomplishments you position yourself as a progressive thinker who should therefore be trusted on such matters. By referencing your lifelong commitment to feminism you’re implying a deep familiarity with, and thus understanding of, feminist theory. These are all basic persuasive writing techniques that subliminally lend authority to the writer.

Unfortunately, you don’t provided a single source for a single statement that you’ve made, even the verifiably true parts. Nor have you directly referenced so much as a single piece of feminist theory to support your argument, even though there are many. Instead you’ve based the entire thing on vague, emotive statements, about vaguely defined (and one sided) personal experiences and vague references to already vague anecdotal evidence, in an attempt to garner pathos for your plight as a distraught mother, with all the connotations of authoritative love that that implies.

Which unfortunately leaves me - or even anybody who might only cautiously agree with you - no real avenue for response. Of course, there’s absolutely nothing stopping me attempting to argue against the scientific facts and feminist theories you’re implying in this post, the only problem is that despite knowing exactly what you mean (because unlike you, I’ve been doing this longer than a fortnight) you’ve only ever inferred your arguments. So, like Lucy holding out the football, you claim to want an open and frank discourse, yet you’ve left yourself free to change (but never elaborate on) your arguments as and how you wish, constantly leaving anybody but your most ardent opponants on the back foot. 

Like most good liberals, I was totally on board with transgender “liberation.” After all, it’s the next civil rights struggle, right? I’ve marched against war, racism, for health care, for women’s and gay and lesbian rights.  In the 1980s, I surfed the Second Wave of feminism, loving who I chose, dressing as I chose, speaking my mind, and living the life of equality first wavers like Susan B. Anthony,Charlotte Gilman, and Emma Goldman fought so hard for. I was a two-timeelection worker on President Obama’s campaigns. In the past couple of years, I celebratedas homophobic laws toppled, state by state, and gay marriage morphed into mainstream reality. And until recently, I’ve had the unexamined, vague conviction that the “T” in LGBT was part of the same good trend: more inclusion for the marginalized.

But that has all changed. I’ve shifted 270 degrees from the cookie-cutter progressive vantage point I inhabited only a few months ago. It’s not a 360 turnaround. I believe in civil rights for all people, and I don’t think trans people should face job, housing, or other discrimination. But I no longer see transgenderism as a liberation movement. From where I now stand, I see it as a profound and fundamentally conservative undermining of the gains of the Second Wave of feminism. It’s the Third Wave, a tsunami of narcissism, of post-modernist relativism run amok…a hall of mirrors, wave upon wave of shiny, YouTube transition videos and Tumblr confessions… where subjective feelings and ideas always trump physical reality.

Something has gone wrong. Very wrong. I’ve been asleep for 20 years, but now I’m waking up…because my own teenage daughter is being churned and tossed in this very turbulent sea.

When my daughter announced to me that she is transgender a few months ago, my initial reaction was basically positive—even though she had never before expressed an inkling of any such identity. In fact, she had always talked about how glad she was to be a girl. I’d raised her to feel that, like me, she could dress, act, or be anything she wanted to be and until very recently, that’s exactly what she did.

The change was abrupt. She admitted to binge-watching triumphant and ecstatic FTM transition videos for days on end. She started using jargon like “genderqueer.” But despite this turnaround, despite misgivings, I made an appointment with a gender therapist, ruminating on what it would mean to welcome a son into the erstwhile form of a daughter.

A researcher and scientist by profession and by avocation, I dived deeply into the Internet and medical literature on FTMs. And the more I read, talked, and emailed (and I delved a lot), the weaker my kneejerk-liberal “trans ally” position became.

I learned that everything I had taken for granted about women’s liberation has changed. A dislike of pink and traditionally (think: 1950s norms) female activities and interests now means a girl, a teen, is “actually” a boy.  Instead of acceptance if a girl wears denim and button-down shirts, that’s called by the archaic term “cross dressing” and the girl is pressured to “transition.” Gender role conformity is more rigid than ever, which is the great irony of transgenderism. Girls who used to find their home as “butch” lesbians don’t have anyone to identify with or look up to anymore. Women’s or lesbian bookstores, discussion groups, bars seem to have vanished from the face of the earth. Everything has been subsumed under the “queer” label.  And while nearly all FTMs start out as lesbians, they disavow it after beginning “transition.” They were never really lesbians, after all. They are really just crossdressers who yearn to be male.

And when it comes to “transition,” the holy grail, the magic elixir, is testosterone. It would be one thing if “T” could be used experimentally, then abandoned, with only temporary and reversible changes to the mind and body. Then you could say: Why not? Give it a try. But even a few weeks on “T” usually results in forever-thickened vocal cords, forever-thickened body and facial hair, and—by some accounts I’ve read—even brain changes that are hard to undo.  If a girl or woman transitions and changes her mind, she will forever live in a modified, androgen-altered body, whether she likes it later or not. Sterility is another risk. And many FTMs on long term hormone treatment are plagued by chronic infections, heart trouble, high blood pressure, premature aging.

That the frontal lobes of teenagers’ brains are not fully developed is now settled science, no more controversial than gravity or evolution.  We now know that executive function—judgment, impulse control, planning, and self monitoring skills—don’t reach maturity in young people until at least the age of 25. Yet the medical and psychological professions are allowing—no, they are pushing—surgical and pharmaceutical transition as the “answer” for teens who are questioning their identities. There’s a huge cognitive dissonance here: If adolescence is a time of limited executive function, how on earth can we be encouraging, let alone celebrating, such life-changing decisions being made by teen (and much younger) people?

How can it be that surgery and testosterone are now seen as the only viable solution to the feeling that a female doesn’t fit conventional gender stereotypes? What happened to: women can be anything they want to be? Shave your legs, don’t, cut your hair, don’t….love who you want, work on cars, have a child, don’t….that’s liberation as I’ve always understood it. But Second Wave feminism is considered stodgy and old fashioned now. Despite its fundamentally liberating message to women.

The last time you approached your Mum to tell her about a difficult, life changing personal decision you’d made did she:

Congratulate you on your maturity

Politely try to talk you out of it

Immediately change the subject

Attempt to kickstart an entirely new political movement for the sole, expressly stated purpose of preventing you from ever achieving your goal

Who can give a fuck about MAC Belfast and Titanic Quarter when in an area (that I wont name) out of a catchment area of 5,000 people, over 1,000 are on antidepressive medication, there are families where the third generation are living on welfare and it has the highest level of poverty in the United Kingdom.

Its no wonder that sectarianism breeds in communities like this, where has the peace dividend been for The Village? Or Ballymurphy? 

This is the first time the power-sharing executive has had to deal with a ‘real’ political crisis that isnt orange or green and cant be dressed up as such.