Rad-Leaning Trans Man (Side Blog)

You are at home watching TV and on comes an advert. It features a young man having a drink with his male friends when they see a charming woman enter the bar. The man walks up to her and tries to seduce her but she ignores him. He looks back at his friends who are laughing at him. Suddenly, he leaves the bar and comes back later on with his hair dyed blue. The woman instantly throws herself at him, kissing him and all the men in the bar are stunned. “Go blue” is the name of the hair dye brand, for men only. The next day on the radio you hear another advert promoting blue hair for men in which a woman explains why blue hair gets her instantly turned on. Going on Facebook, articles are shared : “10 reasons why men with blue hair are the sexiest”. Another article is titled : “why women are turned off by natural hair colour”. Yet another article from a website called “OpenMindNaturaScience” explains why women’s brain is pleased with the colour blue and how this colour makes them happy because of biological reasons. On the subway, a poster shows a sexy man with blue hair running away from dozens of female models who all want a piece of him. Day after day the medias keep focusing on women’s preferences, especially their attraction towards the colour blue and blue hair. And little by little, all the men around you dye their hair blue. The bus driver, the customer, your boss, your friend, the man on the street. They all have different shades of blue hair. Some are even dressed in blue, buy blue cars, wear blue make up.

And you see all these men and start thinking : “They’re so obviously trying to please us women, they know that’s what we like, this is all for us. Look at this guy with his blue shoes and blue hair, obviously trying to get our attention… and this guy at work who pretends he doesn’t like me, he’s wearing blue nail polish, he’s trying to look tough, he might not even like me but he’s still trying to please me. They’re working so hard to look good for us, this guy is rude but look at his blue hair ! He knows his place deep down. I go on the subway and I see all these men with blue hair, obviously responding to our desires, obviously interested in seducing us. All this time and money and keeping it perfectly blue every day. They think about us all the time. They are desperate to be liked by me. They ARE for ME.”

A TIM scared to go outside and scared to interact with people, including other men, is considered by progressives and leftists not paranoid, but reasonably fearful. It’s such a scary time to be trans, they say. There’s a genocide going on, they claim. It’s perfectly understandable that a trans woman is scared and wants his transfem spaces, his communities, his transfem specific resources.

I’ll abbreviate the blog to TMVP, which was created specifically to address the sexual violence “TME” people experience from “TMA” people, and it’s really no coincidence that when people speak of “TME” people, they’re speaking of transmascs. The blog exists within the TMA/TME framework, yet the existence of the blog clashes with the ideology the blogger claims to support.

For those unfamiliar, TME means “transmisogyny exempt”, supposedly means “everyone that isn’t a trans woman”, although really the only people it’s ever used for are female people. And TMA is “transmisogyny affected”, so all TIMs.

The blogger describes themself as a TME trans neutral, so a nonbinary identified female person. For anyone reading this, I advise caution and distance since their age is not confirmed, they could be an adult, they could be underage, but regardless they are in an immensely vulnerable state. I’ve blocked them for their sake so they do not have to see this.

They’ve recognized that the TIMs of the trans community often get away with sexual assault and that transmasc survivors are silenced, this is something they’ve had a personal experience with, and there’s a clash between this experience and trying to maintain transgender unity and solidarity, since pointing this out, even when using TRA language. It is still drawing attention to sex based dynamics, which goes against “transfeminism”, as sex based oppression is not real in their theory, not only that, but it is outright dangerous. It does not matter how strongly TMVP hates “TERFs”. As expected, people in their inbox try to bait them into agreeing with radical feminism, and they react harshly and strongly. Unfortunately for them, “TERF” isn’t actually a real category, so they don’t need to be a radical feminist or believe in sex based oppression to be considered one.

Yes, even if they believe that trans women are systemically oppressed, and trans men have privilege, and TMA/TME is real and they abide by that framework strictly. They’re a female person who ventured a bit too close to voicing what looks like sex based oppression. Even if they claim they aren’t and their argument is that transmascs aren’t listened to because trans women are so marginalized, nobody believes transmascs, which is not acknowledging sex based oppression, and still appeals to “transfeminist” theory, any further speculation upon this ruins the whole illusion. It is dangerous to TRA rhetoric.

Mousidy is particularly cruel about this

There is a lot more. They’ve been sent gore. Their pinned post has nearly a hundred hate comments. Their entire blog is just filled of brimming seething hatred directed at them. They have practically no allies outside of a small handful of people, as other transmascs tear them down hard, and the TIMs do what they do best in this situation, death threats, suicide baits, guilt trips, manipulation. They see no allies from radical feminism and reject radfems firmly.

This is what happens when you acknowledge male violence to any extent within the trans community. You simply can’t. While this individual may hold firm in their trans rights advocacy and to stay far away from radical feminism or gender critical theory, what can’t be ignored is how unstable this position is. It is what leads trans men to peaking, what shatters our illusions, what are we supposed to do about the issues with male violence if we are not allowed to name it? Not allowed to see it? Not allowed to find and share support for it? What other choice are trans men left with even? There isn’t any, you have to submit to the ideology completely or you are gone. You would be better dead. You are a TERF. You are killing trans women and girls and you must repent or die.

This is also how the trans community isolates female members. Two things work against us here. Anti feminist indoctrination, where radical feminists are considered a branch of fascism. And also the fact that it is true radical feminism is not particularly for transmascs, TMVP was denied access to a crisis shelter, and most likely blames radfems for this. While radical feminism is not the fascist evil it’s portrayed as, the fact is transmascs are still overlooked, seen as a part of the opposing trans community, rather than fellow female people to be liberated. Tensions between the two groups only deepen as transmascs have and will harass radfems, bi and straight ones appropriating lesbian culture, spitting on and insulting the solidarity radfems sometimes offer.

The constant conflict and general lack of desire to have female solidarity, having been told trans solidarity is of the upmost importance, transmascs remain relegated to the wider trans community. We are told “TERFs” want to genocide us all, or genocide only trans women and we’re privileged men who need to understand that. TMVP is being thoroughly punished, slandered, dragged across all of transfem tumblr by mousidy and his followers, and is given hardly any support from other female trans people.

As female people we are to put the interest of males first and foremost, in this case, that is trans “women”. They might be so merciful to us that we can talk about having been raped once before, even more if they allow someone to admit it was a trans woman who did it. From there you’re expected to clarify that you don’t believe it’s all trans women, and you’re expected to be grateful they listened to you at all. What is not allowed, and will never be allowed, is pointing out the rate of violence, sexual violence, that trans “women” commit against themselves and “TME” people. What’s also not allowed is bringing up how many “TME” victims are silenced.

You can talk about your assault, just don’t say it’s a pattern, or a problem, or any indication of a large scale issue, any indication you’d like to see improvement on the problem, don’t ask for actions to be taken to address this rape culture, and especially do not point to who is doing it. Only ever talk about your assault as it was done by someone who happened to be transfem.

When a female trans person observes another one breaking these rules, they will step in and correct them. “Hey what happened to you was bad but speaking about it like this is very transmisogynistic.” The male’s ideology and peace of mind must be protected, even if it means policing the way someone talks about their sexual assault. Being “transmisogynistic” is a greater sin than committing an act of sexual violence. Deny any of this you face expulsion and hatred from the wider community of which you depend upon.

Female trans people are trapped, cut off from women who would advocate for them, unable to make any progress against their oppression within the community, unable to name and point to the oppressor, keeping themselves and each other in check, taught to care more about TIMs than ourselves and each other.

The end result is what you see above. Isolated, publicly humiliated, and disowned.

I want to reinforce what OP said: Please give this person space. Do not bother her, DO NOT send her hate or criticism. If you give her support, please DO NOT bring radical feminism into it, and use anon. She's being actively harmed and harassed, and she will need time and space to cope and process on her own terms. Radical feminism will only overwhelm and upset this person because of the damage the trans community has done, and it will not help her with any cognitive dissonance she may have. She will come to her own conclusions on her own time, likely slowly and painfully. All we can do is stand by, and be there for her if she ever reaches out to us.

Then I've got a friend who's a woman who says she's a man, and she says her family knew something was up when as a kid she was more into wearing suits and had more fun playing pretend as male characters from action and comedy movies.

I’d like to outline a few concepts that may help you understand the problems with the science that has been conducted on the subject of trans people. I am not a scientist, so I’d much appreciate any feedback or corrections.

1. Begging the question

Here are some of the studies being held up as proof that trans people are “valid”:

A study of the brains of trans women, trans men, cis women and cis men, and the potential for gender-based differences: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/01/150107082133.htm

A study on the brains of some trans men, and some cis men and cis women, claiming to show that the brains of the trans men had more similarities to the cis male brains, relative the cis female brains: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022395610001585

You’ve heard it before, I’m sure. Are you ready to learn why these studies were giant wastes of time? And no, it’s not even because of the obvious problem right off the bat (How did they know there were no closted trans people in the “cis” groups? How could they be sure there were no future detransitioners in the trans groups?).

It’s because, if you want to do science, you cannot start by assuming what you are trying to prove. This is known as the fallacy of “begging the question.” They relied on the self-reports of trans people to sort them in a group apart from cis people. In attempting to prove the biological basis for the category “trans”, they assumed the category “trans” had a biological basis. This is what pseudoscientists do.

This fallacy comes up a lot in arguments with the devoutly religious: “The human eye is too complex to have evolved, it must have been designed. Therefore, God exists.” Sir, no…. you cannot assume that the eye is too complex to have evolved that way. You must prove that to me.

What they should have done, right from the start, is study the brains of self-identified trans people, and from there predict the future detransitioners. Or they could have studied the brains of self-identified non-trans people, and predicted which ones were closted trans people. That would have been real science.

“I am not convinced. After all, they found something that looks “female” in the brains of the trans women! Maybe their methods are flawed but they must have found something!”

Not necessarily. I think what may be going on is known as:

2. P-hacking

When I was a young child, I saw a History Channel Special that claimed to prove that the Bible predicted the JFK assassination. I think the letters of a certain translation were arranged in grid form, and certain words related to the JFK assassination were grouped in close proximity. Stupid, right?

But I was just a kid, so I told my dad “Dad! Did you know the bible predicted the JFK assassination?” And my father recognized that as an excellent opportunity to teach me about p-hacking.

“No,” he said, “those are just coincidences.”

“Dad, are you blind? What are the odds that those exact words would be found together like that?”

“Not very high. But don’t forget… they weren’t looking for evidence that the bible predicted the JFK assassination. They were looking for evidence that the Bible predicted anything, in the history of ever. It’s actually quite unlikely, using their methods, that you’d find NO uncanny predictions of anything that’s ever happened in human history. And you’d probably find a few uncanny predictions in the Harry Potter books, using this method.”

These researchers in the second study cited did not set out to find whether trans men had similar fractional anistropy levels in posterior part of the right superior longitudinal fasciculus to cis men. They were looking at whether the white matter patterns of trans men had any similarity to cis men (of course, in doing so they flagrantly beg the question, but I digress).

The brain is highly complex. When you conduct an MRI scan, you generate mountains of data. And if you set out to prove that a similarity exists somewhere in this mile-deep well of data you have generated for these individuals, you are going to find something that appears statistically significant. It’s actually unlikely that you will find no similarities between any two groups of people who have their brains scanned. And, if you are engaged in anti-scientific motivated reasoning, you will take this and claim to have found evidence for a biological basis for trans identification.

“Perhaps there is faulty science going on but you can’t argue with the results! Transition saves lives! Studies have shown that it makes people feel so much better!”

Well, there’s a problem with that, too.

3. The placebo effect

The neurological basis of the placebo effect has been extensively studied. We know, for example, that it can be augmented or dampened by certain drugs. We know that it exists even when you know you are being given a placebo. And we know that the more elaborate a placebo is, the more effective it is: so a surgery will be more effective than an injection, which will be better than a pill.

Do you see where I’m going with this? Have you ever heard of a more elaborate treatment than gender transition: surgery, hormones, clothing, hair, name, pronouns, every aspect of your life can change.

But transition has not been proven to be any more effective at treating gender dysphoria than some kind of equally elaborate placebo. That’s the piece that’s missing, that would usually be accounted for when studying any sort of medical treatment.

“But there are a lot of health benefits to placebos. If they help people, then they help people.”

This is true. There’s a problem, though. Transition is not tumeric pills or reiki or like… journaling frequently. In fact, it comes with risks of absolutely nightmarish consequences. Trans women are walking around, right now, with colostomy bags because of botched vaginoplasties. Trans men are stuck with chronic kidney infections from phalloplasties, as well as the risk of gangrene and lifelong weakness in their donor sites, as well as phantom pain and progressive tightening and sclerosing from their mastectomies. Puberty blockers disrupt brain development and put a child at risk of osteoporosis, sterility, and sexual dysfunction. Hormones cause powerful and systemic changes that have not been fully studied, but consider this: what happens when the cartilagenous valves on a male-sized heart become thinner and more flexbile under the influence of estrogen? What happens when the cartilage structures in a female sized brain become larger and tougher in response to testosterone? Do you know?

You don’t, because nobody knows. We aren’t studying these treatments. We are experimenting on human beings, just like they did in the Nazi camps, and for what: treatments that have not been proven to be better than a placebo, that are based on faulty science, and that don’t even hold up to common sense. Why would you amputate a healthy young woman’s breasts? Because she begged you to? Is that how medicine works?

“But why does the trans rights movement need to lean on junk science? Why don’t they do real science instead?”

Because it is a religion. That’s it, that’s the only explanation left. They believe that they have gender identities, that are at odds with their physical bodies. Theses gender identities have not been demonstrated to exist. These gender identities seem to want things of trans people, and they seem to be placated with certain rites (going to the beach after top surgery, standing to pee after phalloplasty) and certain prayers (compelled pronoun usage). Gender identities act similarly to the members of any polytheistic pantheon.

I have no problem with anyone’s religion. But it is time the scientific establishment, and the government, understand that in “affirming” trans people, while defacing the scientific method, logic and common sense, they are in fact respecting an establishment of religion. They do this to the ultimate detriment of trans people, who have come to them for help, for answers, and are made a mockery.

“Why do you care so much about trans people?”

Source: Documentary lauds Hollywood stuntwomen, who do everything men do but in high heels (Sept. 22, 2020)

One of the most sought-after stuntwomen in Hollywood, Ms. [Zoe] Bell crashes through glass, slams into book cases and leaps from tall buildings. She has done stunts on more than 20 films and television series, including "Alias," "Kill Bill" and "Xena: Warrior Princess." Asked if she could accomplish a 22-story spinning fall from a skyscraper for 2004's "Catwoman," Ms. Bell thought for a moment and said, "Yes, I can." To get the chilling fall just right, she did it four times. "It's not until after you've been hit by a car and landed all right that the fear kicks in," she said. Stuntwomen often face greater dangers than their male cohorts. While stuntmen wear pads under their clothing, stuntwomen in action films are often minimally clothed; there is no place to hide padding or protective gear in their bikinis or ball gowns. Doubling for Sharon Stone, Ms. Bell had to do the high fall in "Catwoman" in high heels. "Because that's how women fight and die—in heels," she said, with a slight roll of her eyes.