A few months ago my doorbell rang unexpectedly. In the spirit of curiosity, I went downstairs to see my surprise guests, who quickly revealed that the purpose of their visit was to share with me the good word of the Lord. I graciously expressed my lack of interest, and thanked them for stopping by. To their credit, they left agreeably, and neither tried to make me feel like an unrepentant sinner, a hateful reactionary, or someone who was actively obstructing their ability to exist. We went our separate ways without conflict, something only possible in a culture that values freedom of religion.
"Trans ___ are ___" is a gnostic faith statment about the inner divine rather than a divinity greater than onesself. There is no god greater than the self in Genderism.
All of the pieces in your substack so far have been exceptional, including this one. Thank you for expressing the religious nature of gender ideology so clearly and compellingly!
What the author is describing - and very well - is a form of secular religious thinking that skates disturbingly close to fascism. In hurling the 'F' word around so spitefully trans activists are disclosing more about themselves than they realise. Forty five years ago I and a number of others had apparently expelled ourselves from a communist party and one of our number, with a cheeky grin, summed up the 'excommunication' we had been subjected to as an example of secular religious thinking. He summed it up as "Follow me and you need never think again." A comment I hard wired on the spot.
"The notion that anyone could be born in the wrong body is among the cruelest ideas to emerge from the unholy marriage of postmodernism and late-stage capitalism." - brilliant.
I remember reading an article (on Reality's Last Stand, I think) that compared transfolk to the priests of the Church of Woke Delusions. They can do no wrong. Somehow "allies" find a way to almost ignore the crimes of a person, so long as that person calls themselves "trans."
Allowing real religious leaders (e.g., priests) to do whatever they wanted led to generations of people--adults and children alike--being mistreated and abused by the hands of so-called "holy men."
Now, we're watching as trans priests and their queer deacons get away with literal murder and abuse. We're watching a cult radicalize in live-time, my friends.
Absolutely brilliant piece. I am not LGBT, and am in UK, and a signed up TERF. I love
these wonderful sane pieces from people who understand more than me, and can help me appreciate that my views are shared by all of us who are concerned about the madness and dangers of extreme gender ideology - despite whatever 'label' we relate to.
And please do give me a new take on this troubled debate as, frankly, I'm sick if listening to myself. Hope that makes sense.
Nice piece - particularly the line “Gender identity ideology, the belief that there is a gendered spirit that exists separate from the body”. I came to the same conclusion that you have some time back, more aggressively - the reality of gender is that gender has no reality. Gremlins, ghosts, gods and genders - supernatural things which evaporate under scrutiny.
The attendant gender pseudoscience is part of the religion BTW, like parapsychology, occult science, and repressed memories.
A religion without the divine I would define as “folklore”
What I primarily have taken issue with here is the bullet points 1. to 3. which attempt to enumerate why "gender identity ideology" is a religion in all but name. The points are nonsensical and inaccurate. Does anyone really believe that there are some hierarchical levels associated with being a trans ally, etc? And yet, these points passed without challenge, accepted as fact by other commenters.
What Sweden continues to do is to leave decisions about gender affirming care to the patient, the parents, and the doctors. That is how it was here before many red states began to ban or restrict gender affirming care. Now our politicians rely on a small minority of disaffected professionals (in many cases not even doctors) to affirm their own biases against transgender people.
Sadly, I live in such a red state. Sadly, the words of a small number of people who disagree with the establishment and fly around the country to testify in multiple states, are given more weight than the lived experiences of the children and parents who try to share their stories and are refused the opportunity to speak.
The substance? It's built on a faulty premise, and the supporting material is largely as false as the term "gender ideology."
It is likely impossible to prove that people can be born in the wrong body, but there is a sizeable and reliable body of scientific evidence that says people who say they feel like their body is wrong can reap benefit from medical treatment. If science is a belief system, that's weird to me, but I can understand if you want to define it that way.
There is a reason there are a hundred times more members of the American Academy of Pediatrics than there are in the American College of Pediatricians. The AAP has roughly 70,000 members, and relies on best available information for the treatment of children. The ACP has roughly 700 members and touts studies of, to put it kindly, lesser rigor; frankly, they're entirely ideologically based, whereas the AAP deals in pragmatic reality... kind of the opposite of a religion.
Mr. W., the AAP has repeatedly refused to engage in conversation with its own members who say that the research the AAP relies on isn't good quality research, and that the current "affirmation only" model needs to be re-examined. It does not rely on "best available information for the treatment of children", unfortunately. Several countries who conducted systematic reviews determined that the risks of medical treatment of GD youth outweigh the costs. If you are truly interested, here's a link to a summary of Sweden's findings (from the Karolinska Institute): https://news.ki.se/systematic-review-on-outcomes-of-hormonal-treatment-in-youths-with-gender-dysphoria. Meanwhile, the AAP refuses to conduct such a review, and refuses to act based on other countries' reviews. If the AAP's leadership truly believed that what they are advocating is the best course of action, why would they refuse to conduct such a review that would, ostensibly, prove them right and silence their critics?
If you really believe in evidence-based, scientific approach, please do look more deeply into this. Yes, there are people who say that medically transitioning to look like and live as the opposite sex was beneficial to them. What this article (and the rest of this substack) is pointing out is that currently trans activists and their vocal "allies" are pushing and promoting a belief system that results in great harm to many, both gender-dysphoric and not.
Oh, my, what a leap is required to think that believing trans people is a religion! It is at least as easy to categorize the refusal to accept that trans people are different from cis people as a religion.
This substack has exclusively stories which attempt to discredit established medical practices. We are asked to believe that there are no good studies of transgender care despite it having been studied for over 100 years. We are shown no stories of the many kids for whom gender affirming care has been a godsend, kids whose dangerous depression abated once they were acknowledged as they see themselves. Those stories are every bit as important as those of regret, desistance, and doubt on this substack. What's more, they're far more numerous, because most trans kids figure out who they are long before any medical "harms" can come to them.
Bottom line: when someone tells us who they are, we should believe them.
We are willing to platform other voices of lesbian gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals. If you fall into that category and you live within North America, please feel free to submit a piece to us with those studies or stories..
Thank you for the invitation. I am not lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender, but am very close to the transgender community, and therefore have been very interested in what is posted here. If I am unwelcome, I will unsubscribe.
How about engaging with the substances of this piece? What specifically was said that you disagree with? Both sides could trade positive and negative stories of children and others affected by gender ideology all day long, but that doesn't change the fact that gender ideology is ultimately a belief system. It may or may not meet the standard for being labeled an actual religion, but like religion, it relies on a set of unprovable and unfalsifiable beliefs, including that people can actually be born in the wrong body.
Prisha, Ritchie, Helena, Chloe, Sinead and many others told us who they were, and they were believed. And now they've suffered irrevocable iatrogenic harm.
There are now 50,000 people on /r/detrans on Reddit.
So if the kids aren't the problem, then we need to regulate the medical community more. "Believe the kids" is a great argument for stricter medical control and oversight.
Kids are stupid. Because they're kids. A child under 18 isn't even deemed responsible enough to agree to a phone contract, and you think "believe the kids," especially when they've been influenced online, is immune to failure?
We can believe that they're going through something, but that doesn't mean that their beliefs and conclusions are incontestable. It means they need an adult in the room who knows more about life, and more about psychology and childhood development than a hormonal, anxious child, to dig into what's actually wrong.
If you wouldn't trust an adult self-diagnosing with multiple personality disorder, why on earth would you trust an anxious child's self-diagnosis of "trans"? Which isn't even a diagnosis, it's an action. You can't "identify" as "trans" any more than you can "identify" as married.
And the idea that this has been studied for "100 years" is complete nonsense. Every systematic review has shown that all the medicalization is experimental, backed by "low quality evidence." Finland, UK, Sweden and others all came to the same conclusion.
If you know better what they missed in reviewing every single available study on the subject, then speak up. Cite your studies, statistics and sources. Whenever you're ready.
Buck Angel will tell you himself that his transition was experimental, and that was only 30 years go. Only mastectomy has any measure of reliable data, everything else is known to be a medical experiment. Puberty blockers are off-script. Wrong-sex hormones in this way are experimental; they have only been used to treat specific conditions, which doesn't include hormonally normal children, and doesn't include telling them lies about being able to choose which puberty they can go through. And even those treatments came with known risks, never mind to pubertal children.
And Buck will tell you that he doesn't "identify" as a man. Buck is a woman with a specific disorder that created substantial discomfort. The "trans" as an "identity" is political Queer Theory activism, and denies clinically significant gender dysphoria entirely. Dysphoria was erased from the HRC, Stonewall, APA and other definitions of "trans" years ago. It refers to an "umbrella" of gender nonconforming "identities." That's it. You can read that yourself in their glossaries. Which is a way of telling autistic, traumatized and gay kids that the best way of fixing their problems is to mutilate their bodies. What we've been doing successfully for decades has been "watchful waiting." The "identify as" and "gender affirming care" is completely brand new and denies the different presentation of wanting to transition.
So, even if "100 years" was accurate - it's not - the modern cohort is completely different from the historical cohort, which has arisen from social media and activists telling kids magical lies about chasing "gender euphoria."
When you say a thing and we don't believe you, that's not a belief. Non-belief is not a belief. It, by definition, cannot be a religion when you tell us about ethereal sexed thetans improperly sorted into meat prisons, and we say "I don't believe you." But it can be a religion to believe, based on faith, in magical, evolution-and biology-denying ideas like "born in the wrong body."
Sorry but are you not misunderstanding? I didn't read that it's a religion to believe trans people. Trans people exist.
We must start to differentiate between trans people and the 'theatrical attention seekers' who are pushing an extreme ideology...in an unacceptable and totalitarian way.
"Trans ___ are ___" is a gnostic faith statment about the inner divine rather than a divinity greater than onesself. There is no god greater than the self in Genderism.
All of the pieces in your substack so far have been exceptional, including this one. Thank you for expressing the religious nature of gender ideology so clearly and compellingly!
What the author is describing - and very well - is a form of secular religious thinking that skates disturbingly close to fascism. In hurling the 'F' word around so spitefully trans activists are disclosing more about themselves than they realise. Forty five years ago I and a number of others had apparently expelled ourselves from a communist party and one of our number, with a cheeky grin, summed up the 'excommunication' we had been subjected to as an example of secular religious thinking. He summed it up as "Follow me and you need never think again." A comment I hard wired on the spot.
One of the best pieces I've ever read on this issue. Thank you.
Excellent piece. You expressed this so well.
Wonderful piece.
"The notion that anyone could be born in the wrong body is among the cruelest ideas to emerge from the unholy marriage of postmodernism and late-stage capitalism." - brilliant.
I remember reading an article (on Reality's Last Stand, I think) that compared transfolk to the priests of the Church of Woke Delusions. They can do no wrong. Somehow "allies" find a way to almost ignore the crimes of a person, so long as that person calls themselves "trans."
Allowing real religious leaders (e.g., priests) to do whatever they wanted led to generations of people--adults and children alike--being mistreated and abused by the hands of so-called "holy men."
Now, we're watching as trans priests and their queer deacons get away with literal murder and abuse. We're watching a cult radicalize in live-time, my friends.
Absolutely brilliant piece. I am not LGBT, and am in UK, and a signed up TERF. I love
these wonderful sane pieces from people who understand more than me, and can help me appreciate that my views are shared by all of us who are concerned about the madness and dangers of extreme gender ideology - despite whatever 'label' we relate to.
And please do give me a new take on this troubled debate as, frankly, I'm sick if listening to myself. Hope that makes sense.
Long live anti delusion and not anti trans!
Nice piece - particularly the line “Gender identity ideology, the belief that there is a gendered spirit that exists separate from the body”. I came to the same conclusion that you have some time back, more aggressively - the reality of gender is that gender has no reality. Gremlins, ghosts, gods and genders - supernatural things which evaporate under scrutiny.
The attendant gender pseudoscience is part of the religion BTW, like parapsychology, occult science, and repressed memories.
A religion without the divine I would define as “folklore”
Beautifully written and reasoned.
My god, that was BRILLIANT. You've nailed it: a "religion dressed up as a civil rights movement".
What I primarily have taken issue with here is the bullet points 1. to 3. which attempt to enumerate why "gender identity ideology" is a religion in all but name. The points are nonsensical and inaccurate. Does anyone really believe that there are some hierarchical levels associated with being a trans ally, etc? And yet, these points passed without challenge, accepted as fact by other commenters.
What Sweden continues to do is to leave decisions about gender affirming care to the patient, the parents, and the doctors. That is how it was here before many red states began to ban or restrict gender affirming care. Now our politicians rely on a small minority of disaffected professionals (in many cases not even doctors) to affirm their own biases against transgender people.
Sadly, I live in such a red state. Sadly, the words of a small number of people who disagree with the establishment and fly around the country to testify in multiple states, are given more weight than the lived experiences of the children and parents who try to share their stories and are refused the opportunity to speak.
The substance? It's built on a faulty premise, and the supporting material is largely as false as the term "gender ideology."
It is likely impossible to prove that people can be born in the wrong body, but there is a sizeable and reliable body of scientific evidence that says people who say they feel like their body is wrong can reap benefit from medical treatment. If science is a belief system, that's weird to me, but I can understand if you want to define it that way.
There is a reason there are a hundred times more members of the American Academy of Pediatrics than there are in the American College of Pediatricians. The AAP has roughly 70,000 members, and relies on best available information for the treatment of children. The ACP has roughly 700 members and touts studies of, to put it kindly, lesser rigor; frankly, they're entirely ideologically based, whereas the AAP deals in pragmatic reality... kind of the opposite of a religion.
Mr. W., the AAP has repeatedly refused to engage in conversation with its own members who say that the research the AAP relies on isn't good quality research, and that the current "affirmation only" model needs to be re-examined. It does not rely on "best available information for the treatment of children", unfortunately. Several countries who conducted systematic reviews determined that the risks of medical treatment of GD youth outweigh the costs. If you are truly interested, here's a link to a summary of Sweden's findings (from the Karolinska Institute): https://news.ki.se/systematic-review-on-outcomes-of-hormonal-treatment-in-youths-with-gender-dysphoria. Meanwhile, the AAP refuses to conduct such a review, and refuses to act based on other countries' reviews. If the AAP's leadership truly believed that what they are advocating is the best course of action, why would they refuse to conduct such a review that would, ostensibly, prove them right and silence their critics?
There are many reasons why physicians want to be members of the AAP, and believing that the AAP is correct in its position on gender dysphoric children isn't necessarily one of them. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11099561/Leaked-internal-files-pediatricians-angry-professional-bodys-transgender-policy.html
If you really believe in evidence-based, scientific approach, please do look more deeply into this. Yes, there are people who say that medically transitioning to look like and live as the opposite sex was beneficial to them. What this article (and the rest of this substack) is pointing out is that currently trans activists and their vocal "allies" are pushing and promoting a belief system that results in great harm to many, both gender-dysphoric and not.
Oh, my, what a leap is required to think that believing trans people is a religion! It is at least as easy to categorize the refusal to accept that trans people are different from cis people as a religion.
Translation: "I didn't read it, but atheism is a religion."
Nice try.
This substack has exclusively stories which attempt to discredit established medical practices. We are asked to believe that there are no good studies of transgender care despite it having been studied for over 100 years. We are shown no stories of the many kids for whom gender affirming care has been a godsend, kids whose dangerous depression abated once they were acknowledged as they see themselves. Those stories are every bit as important as those of regret, desistance, and doubt on this substack. What's more, they're far more numerous, because most trans kids figure out who they are long before any medical "harms" can come to them.
Bottom line: when someone tells us who they are, we should believe them.
We are willing to platform other voices of lesbian gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals. If you fall into that category and you live within North America, please feel free to submit a piece to us with those studies or stories..
Thank you for the invitation. I am not lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender, but am very close to the transgender community, and therefore have been very interested in what is posted here. If I am unwelcome, I will unsubscribe.
How about engaging with the substances of this piece? What specifically was said that you disagree with? Both sides could trade positive and negative stories of children and others affected by gender ideology all day long, but that doesn't change the fact that gender ideology is ultimately a belief system. It may or may not meet the standard for being labeled an actual religion, but like religion, it relies on a set of unprovable and unfalsifiable beliefs, including that people can actually be born in the wrong body.
Prisha, Ritchie, Helena, Chloe, Sinead and many others told us who they were, and they were believed. And now they've suffered irrevocable iatrogenic harm.
There are now 50,000 people on /r/detrans on Reddit.
So if the kids aren't the problem, then we need to regulate the medical community more. "Believe the kids" is a great argument for stricter medical control and oversight.
Kids are stupid. Because they're kids. A child under 18 isn't even deemed responsible enough to agree to a phone contract, and you think "believe the kids," especially when they've been influenced online, is immune to failure?
We can believe that they're going through something, but that doesn't mean that their beliefs and conclusions are incontestable. It means they need an adult in the room who knows more about life, and more about psychology and childhood development than a hormonal, anxious child, to dig into what's actually wrong.
If you wouldn't trust an adult self-diagnosing with multiple personality disorder, why on earth would you trust an anxious child's self-diagnosis of "trans"? Which isn't even a diagnosis, it's an action. You can't "identify" as "trans" any more than you can "identify" as married.
And the idea that this has been studied for "100 years" is complete nonsense. Every systematic review has shown that all the medicalization is experimental, backed by "low quality evidence." Finland, UK, Sweden and others all came to the same conclusion.
If you know better what they missed in reviewing every single available study on the subject, then speak up. Cite your studies, statistics and sources. Whenever you're ready.
Buck Angel will tell you himself that his transition was experimental, and that was only 30 years go. Only mastectomy has any measure of reliable data, everything else is known to be a medical experiment. Puberty blockers are off-script. Wrong-sex hormones in this way are experimental; they have only been used to treat specific conditions, which doesn't include hormonally normal children, and doesn't include telling them lies about being able to choose which puberty they can go through. And even those treatments came with known risks, never mind to pubertal children.
And Buck will tell you that he doesn't "identify" as a man. Buck is a woman with a specific disorder that created substantial discomfort. The "trans" as an "identity" is political Queer Theory activism, and denies clinically significant gender dysphoria entirely. Dysphoria was erased from the HRC, Stonewall, APA and other definitions of "trans" years ago. It refers to an "umbrella" of gender nonconforming "identities." That's it. You can read that yourself in their glossaries. Which is a way of telling autistic, traumatized and gay kids that the best way of fixing their problems is to mutilate their bodies. What we've been doing successfully for decades has been "watchful waiting." The "identify as" and "gender affirming care" is completely brand new and denies the different presentation of wanting to transition.
So, even if "100 years" was accurate - it's not - the modern cohort is completely different from the historical cohort, which has arisen from social media and activists telling kids magical lies about chasing "gender euphoria."
When you say a thing and we don't believe you, that's not a belief. Non-belief is not a belief. It, by definition, cannot be a religion when you tell us about ethereal sexed thetans improperly sorted into meat prisons, and we say "I don't believe you." But it can be a religion to believe, based on faith, in magical, evolution-and biology-denying ideas like "born in the wrong body."
Sorry but are you not misunderstanding? I didn't read that it's a religion to believe trans people. Trans people exist.
We must start to differentiate between trans people and the 'theatrical attention seekers' who are pushing an extreme ideology...in an unacceptable and totalitarian way.