Gender X and What I Wish I Would Have Said When I Was Forced to "Declare My Pronouns"

As a brief preview, this post covers my concern about young people being covertly coerced into believing they are transgender after the power of suggestion has deeply imprinted their brains, my desire for adult people to be able to freely transition should they so choose once they have been fully educated as to the irreversible damage it causes, the suspected environmental causes of gender dysphoria (chemicals in food, water, cosmetics, etc.), and finally a brief memoir where I tell the story of attending a philosophy class at a women's college in 2016 where a very confused "non-binary" young woman attempted to corral an entire room of free adult women into bending to her will by forcing them to declare their pronouns. I would love your feedback and certainly do not expect anyone to fully agree with me and my nuanced take.

Years ago in my early 20's, I had a co-worker (also in his 20's) who early on in our relationship, let me know that she identified as male. I met him at a time when he still presented as very unfeminine but definitely not in a way that would cause him to be mistaken for a man. I was happy to respect his wish to be referred to as he/him and over time, our friendship developed to the point where I spoke at his wedding (a marriage to a woman) and even testified in Court as a witness when he requested that the judge order his birth certificate changed to show "born male" so he could get a driver's license to say M instead of F in the sex field.

Nine years later, he and his wife ended our friendship due to a disagreement over politics. Despite the fact that I was shocked and hurt that they (and he especially, because when we worked together before he started his hormone therapy, most people unconsciously still automatically referred to him as HER while I had easily accepted him exactly as he wanted to be accepted without further judgment or reluctance) ended our friendship, I still support trans issues. Why? Because I believe that if we demand that people conform to a social norm that requires deception, then we as a society are complicit in committing future fraud against inevitable victim(s) of that deception. 

Brief aside: It's important here to acknowledge the recent and ongoing epidemic of teenaged girls (and boys), who as very suggestible young people being influenced by social media and sinister rhetoric at both the high school and college levels, are suddenly identifying as trans. Abigail Shrier, author of Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, tells us that "between 2016 and 2017, the number of females seeking gender surgery quadrupled in the United States. Thousands of teen girls across the Western world are not only self-diagnosing with a real dysphoric condition they likely do not have; in many cases, they are obtaining hormones and surgeries following the most cursory diagnostic processes" (from her excellent piece in Quillette which I urge you to read in full, here). When my friend and I were in our 20's in the 2000's, the standard protocol by psychiatrists treating gender dysphoria not only required the patient to undergo talk therapy but included the delay of the doctor prescribing irreversible hormone therapy until the patient reached the age of 25 which is the age, neuroscientists tell us, at which our brain finally stops growing. In other words, the implication is that if you still think you were born the wrong sex by the time you're 25 and your prefrontal cortex has stopped growing and your tendency to be super-impulsive has waned (which is why our car insurance rates significantly decrease on that birthday), well, then, you probably were.

A similar example of a social norm that requires deception is when a society forces gay men to "act straight" and marry women. In that case too, the society itself acts as the collective warden who keeps the woman who finds herself in a loveless (and eventually sexless) marriage imprisoned. If adult people born male who felt like they should have been born female and the reverse were as free to transition (after being educated on all possible side effects, it should go without saying) the way gay people are as free to marry each other, we would avoid the problem of fraud-based unions and all the unhappiness that floods the immediate family and fans out to the extended tribe from there.

If we demand that people conform to a social norm that requires deception, then we as a society are complicit in committing fraud against the inevitable future victims.

But a third category? A "neither he nor she" gender class? People who'd get an X on their driver's license instead of an M or an F? That is nonsense. And it's nonsense of the most insidious kind. Why? Because it's actually the most effective way to delegitimize the trans rights movement.

And by rights, I literally mean, the freedom of my friend and others like him to live as the gender they feel they should have been born into and/or legal protection from the government taking action to prevent him and people like him from doing so. As I mentioned, he's married to a woman -- they go out into the world as man and wife and now that he's fully transitioned, you'd have no idea he was born female. 

Gender X: the best way to stop the trans-acceptance movement in its tracks

Now that people like Caitlyn Jenner have been mainstreaming the awareness that transgender is a thing and does happen, even to extremely masculine men, the most effective way to stop the trans-acceptance movement in its tracks would be to infiltrate it with people who want to introduce absurdity into the discussion -- making patently false and baseless claims like, "there is no such thing as gender" and "it's possible for someone to be nonbinary." And here I want to make an important logic-based point. If there is no such thing as gender, then how can a person "identify" as the opposite gender? Trans people, by definition (and in order to be diagnosed and prescribed the hormone drugs necessary to "transition" by a medical doctor) must have symptoms that meet this description: "strong, persistent feelings of identification with the opposite gender and discomfort with one's own assigned sex that results in significant distress or impairment. People with gender dysphoria desire to live as members of the opposite sex." The OPPOSITE sex. Without two opposite sexes, you can't "identify" with the one you're not. Don't let me over-explain this; I know you get it. Without two genders, you can't transition from one to the other. And by gender I mean sex, of course, and by sex, I mean gender in this context (which is why our state I.D.'s as well as our birth certificates say "sex" on them).

It is absurd on its face to state that gender falls along a continuum (i.e. that it’s possible to be non-binary) but it's also counterproductive and harmful to trans people. If a national conversation is happening because of a trans celebrity who's willing to break the ice, and it sparks a wave of open-mindedness and burgeoning acceptance from coast to coast, throw a monkey wrench into the mix to snuff it right out. Gender X is that monkey wrench. And for good reason. It's a ploy: it's a divide and conquer strategy.

This WaPo story tells of "Mister" Nik Sakurai of a Washington, DC who was approved for a an X rather than the standard M on his driver's license, the first in the United States. He went to an all boys high school and came out as gay and bi at some point(s) during his senior year. But then he decided that he's really more of a They/Them person and "gender neutral" than a He/Him and male. For the logic based reason I described earlier, this undermines the trans movement which requires 2 genders (2 sexes) to transition between, by definition, but it also denigrates the very real pain of trans people who feel that they were born into the wrong body! (Imagine that! Really imagine what that would be like, please! It would be a living horror movie. Only your real life.) 

But there's another equally sinister component at the core of this attempt to create a third gender. Forced speech. As I said earlier, had I met my (former) trans friend after he'd been on Testosterone, I would not have guessed he'd been born female. And how he explained it to me was, "I identify as male" not "I am really male and in denial of the uterus I have," but with the acknowledgement/caveat that he is not actually male but would like to appear to be so that society sees him that way because that's how he feels in his mind. That's A HUGE difference. The first acknowledges reality and talks about identifying as the opposite gender as a compulsion; the second denies reality, much like Nik here who wants to "identify" with something that doesn't exist.

Here is the perfect place for me to point out that we as a society must conduct scientific research to find out what's going on here, and ask, why the onslaught of gender dysphoric people in our society? We know that hormones and other chemicals in our water are causing the feminization of fish and other animals. We would be remiss to assume that our species would be exempt from such side effects. We need to guard our human species' fertility and virility as though our survival depended on it (because it obviously does). Also, ladies, be wise when you purchase your make-up (and gentlemen who wear make-up); most cosmetics and even many perfumes contain phthalates which are known endocrine disruptors. According to a 2009 study published in the Journal of Andrology, "phthalates, the chemical found in many vinyl and plastic products, tends to 'feminize' boys, altering their brains to express more feminine characteristics. Phthalates are found in vinyl products (including vinyl flooring), PVC shower curtains, plastic furniture and even in the plastic coating of the insides of dishwashing machines." They're also linked to decreased fertility, "reproductive toxicity", and cancer. Phthalates have been banned from cosmetics in the European Union, but are still found in MOST cosmetics sold in the United States. Learn more, PLEASE.

D.C. is not the only place where one can obtain a driver's license that indicates that they identify with an imaginary state of existence. Now Oregon has passed a law making it an option on their driver's licenses too. And the first US passport with an X in the gender field was issued in October of 2021.

We as a society must protest the idea that there are more than two genders, but even more than "we as a society," actual trans people must fight this concept and these infiltrators, and fight them hard, and win. Because the goal of Nik and people like him is not to create a loving accepting society where people can be free to be who they are; it's to use force to FORCE people to comply to their vision of a gender-less society, the one they are taking action to create, every single day.

There's another more sinister component at the core of this attempt to create a third gender. Forced speech.

In the spring of 2016, I was enrolled in a course at St Catherine University, at the time a women-only school, called "the Philosophy of Sex, Sexuality and Love." I was taking this class with the day students while being enrolled in the Evening Weekend Online program for adults, simultaneously. I was not the only one in the room in her thirties; there were also 2 other women in the class not in the usual stage of life for going to college. One traditional classmate was a young woman who was vocally attempting to sort through her confusion around who and what she was. She was very open about having identified as everything there is possible to identify as, gay, bi, cis (cis is short for cisgender and means born female, identifies as a straight woman OR born male, identifies as a straight man). Presently, she had chosen to go by a name that could be a boy or a girl’s name and was using male pronouns. Unlike my friend who was literally dying to get on Testosterone at that age and who chose a boy’s name when he changed his name (which he did in a court of law, not just by telling everyone, I go by "_______" now), she was very flippant about exploring all the "nonbinary" options. I was struck by something so insincere about her. About her demeanor. About her speech affect. And, I couldn't help feeling so bad for my friend (all over again) who had felt so profoundly alienated by a female body and wanted nothing more than to have been born male so he wouldn't have to hurt his family by becoming -- literally -- someone else. In contrast, this undergrad's nonchalant chitchat about gender identity came across as shallow and demeaning of actually trans people whose emotional compulsion to seek the gender role ascribed by society to the opposite sex is unyielding and authentic. I initially chalked her behavior up to the normal teenage angst that many people go through and figured that at the least, I'd meet some interesting people in the class and have some interesting philosophical arguments over the course of the semester. But around day two, this immature person revealed her actual desire: to assert dominance over all members of the class by inserting herself into the authority position, usurping the leadership of even the professor in the power dynamic. She "suggested" that we all declare our pronouns. She explained that she was going by he/him (for now, of course -- she wasn't taking Testosterone: "he/him" was her feeling of the year) and would like to know what everyone else goes by. And no one reacted. Not one of the women in the class or the woman professor. I blinked. My gut flagged this display as an attempt to assert dominance and leverage control but I was caught so off guard that I was at a loss for words. Could the professor have denied this request? I mean ... yes, of course. And so could I have. But I didn't. I went right along and said, "she/her" as one by one, the class played a distorted version of "duck duck gray duck" chair by chair, woman by woman, force making its way around a circle that made a mockery of any kind of round table discussion.

And here's why. Force it was. Forced speech. I was forced to speak. I didn't need to declare my pronouns. No one in the room did. (Did I mention it was a women's college at the time?) Yet each of us submissively displayed compliance to this request. In marked contrast, actually trans people want to present as the opposite gender so well, so authentically, that they no longer need to declare their gender. They want to pass as that gender -- no questions asked. How do we know? Because trans people born female are paying money to have their breasts removed. Trans people born male are paying money to have their penises removed. I need to cry for a second. But fine. If that's what they want to do, fine. That's freedom. But it's not freedom when I am forced to speak, forced to declare the obvious in an obvious situation. Here's what I wish I would have said:

"No. I'm not going to declare my pronouns. If you're making a special request of me to refer to you by specific pronouns, then I'm happy to oblige and use him and he because I would have thought you identified as a girl. So thank you, so much, for letting me know."

And in response to further demands to declare my pronoun, if necessary, I would say, "you can use whatever words you want in reference to me -- your perception of me has no bearing on my perception of me. If there is anyone in the room in doubt as to my gender identity, please, just go with your best guess."

The depths of the collective denial of reality that were required for everyone in that room to subserviently go along to get along are astounding to me. And I apologize to myself for not being ready for it. That will never happen again.

This is how far this movement to normalize the collective denial of reality has gone already:

These people want there to be no genders at all, no defined categories. They'll tell you they don't want "labels" but they really don't want any gender at all. And that is the stuff of a dystopian nightmare. I will blog further about what I see as a possible future if we continue to go down that path but for now, let me close with a little story about my parents, yes -- the ones who met in a Las Vegas casino, my super liberal mom and very conservative dad. They didn't want me to feel forced into any gender stereotypes as they raised me so my childhood bedroom was decorated in all primary colors. No pink and no blue allowed. My sister, 12 years older than I am (and 12 at the time), got to pick everything out so she picked out wall art with bright bunches of balloons -- orange, red, yellow and green, and cute white clouds, all fabric, to hang on the walls. The blanket was a bright bold red and the pillows were green and yellow (they put a twin bed in the room with the crib so that the room would be multipurpose from the get go). Somehow she got away with a fabric rainbow wall-hang because "a rainbow is an actual natural phenomenon in nature" (dad) and "it's not pastel" (mom) so there was one stripe of blue in the room when the original rule was no pink or blue. Now, the carpet: it was fabulous shag magenta carpet (come on, it was 1981). I loved this carpet till the day I left at 18. My sister sold this to them as purple, and they in turn had a long discussion about whether purple has a gender stereotype attached to it. (Sigh. I know.) Now, I was allowed to pick out the toys I wanted as a child and was never forced to play with anything or told I couldn't play with anything. Guess what my favorite thing to do was? Play Black Jack or 500 or Gin with my mom -- or games like Clue or Who Dunnit with whoever would play, and I love love LOVED the game Tripoley. I had some dolls and even though I liked Nintendo and was fairly good at it, I loved to watch my cousins rescue Princess Peach for HOURS. I'd beat anyone who'd play Duck Hunt against me hands down and my cousin and I would partner against my mom while playing Nintendo Jeopardy. No one told me I couldn't shoot the Nintendo gun because I was a girl and, at the same time, I hated playing any sports -- hated kickball, hated softball, hated tennis! I hated being outside, especially if it was cold, and I hated being on teams, so fricking much. I naturally gravitated toward reading, writing or games. I liked Barbies but got very bored very quickly unless I was creating an elaborate backstory for their lives. My point is that there was no attempt to keep me from pursuing stereotypical "girl" activities. Nor was there any attempt to force me to pursue "boy" activities. When I was 15, my mom let me paint my whole room lilac, stick a constellation of glow in the dark stars on the wall, and hang a poster of Brandon Lee from the Crow above my bed. It said, "Believe in angels."

 

(Best movie of ALL TIME -- lol, the traditional gender roles! And the vengeance! And the violence! And the sex!) My mom got a kick out of the results of their experiment: Give a child (near) total freedom and exert no influence over their tastes and preferences and when that child grows into a 15 year old girl, she might still end up being filled with glee at the retribution/romance-based serial murder of anyone who threatens the eternal love of the main characters in an action-fantasy movie.

Compare my parents to the parents of the newborn baby mentioned in the tweet above, the baby with no "gender marker" on its health card. My mom and dad were trying to avoid ridiculous societal limitations such as, "boys become doctors, girls become nurses" and "girls become paralegals and boys become lawyers" and they did a damn good job. But by denying a newborn baby a sex on its birth certificate, the parents in the tweet aren't rejecting stereotypes or "traditional gender roles," they are denying REALITY.

My parents did a good job despite their many flaws. They taught me to question the motivation behind every message: who is telling me to believe this? Why? What emotion is it designed to make me feel? What action is it designed to make me take? Who benefits? Who profits? Is it rooted in greed for power or greed for money or both? These are the questions we need to be asking ourselves regarding this bizarre movement mandating forced speech and the attempt to neuter society itself.