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Wow, wow, wow.... the first article that so articulately pinpoints the source of the desperate nature of trans activism: how it is necessary for trans activists to cultivate and breed a generation of young trans adults in order to justify their own existence. Yes, our gay and lesbian children are sacrificial lambs.

And so many of us "social justice progressives" were completely hoodwinked by it.

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This is a well-articulated article, pulling important strands from the trans-tangle that still confuses so many. Kudos to Jeff Cleghorn for speaking the truth and to you for framing his testimony in the correct light: as simply another brave step in his long path working for gay liberation. May more self-LOVING gays and lesbians who care about all children in the next generations muster the courage to speak up.

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Phil Illy is right about one thing, the silencing of discussion about AGPs hurts everyone, even the AGPs.

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As a gay Oregonian and a gender critical moderate Democrat, I am a little envious of Mr. Cleghorn for living in a state where the legislature will entertain a bill that would prohibit teachers from exposing their students to ideas about gender without prior parental approval. That is because progressive Democrats control the legislative agenda here in Oregon. It is unthinkable today that such a bill would even receive a hearing. It's almost as if progressive legislators are trying to outdo one another in finding ways to put minors at risk. In the most recent regular session, for example. progressives gave minors who are 15 years of age or older permission to go forth and subject themselves to gender affirming medical care.

Mr. Cleghorn's story illustrates an unfortunate consequence of America's extreme political polarization. Gender critical gay activists who seek to curb the excesses of trans activism through legislation are in the unenviable position of having to work with unreliable allies in Republican-led statehouses. In Georgia the legislature has embraced Trump's Big Lie and has sought to disrupt the prosecution of the fake electors scheme. Such a Trumpy political environment is the natural habitat of far right Christian operatives who are not going to make a nuanced distinction between trans and gay. As far as they're concerned, marriage equality and laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation are as rich a target as men in women's bathrooms.

Of course, such a political climate makes it even more important for gay men like Mr. Cleghorn to monitor the bills that are being introduced in the legislature of his home state and testify against anti-gay measures. In any case, blue-state America can wail until the cows come home about "anti-trans" legislation in red states. Unless the courts overturn laws protecting youth against trans indoctrination and gender affirming policies and medical care, over time such measures will become accepted and their objectives normalized in their home states. At some point it will become obvious that trans activists' horror stories about "trans genocide" and other catastrophes will prove to be just that - fictional stories with no connection to the real world. That realization could make it more difficult for trans activists to defend their agenda in the face of the harm it causes confused young people, their loved ones and society.

Changing subjects, is there peer-reviewed literature supporting the contention that the "homosexual transsexual" (HSTS) component of Ray Blanchard's typology of male transsexuals remains valid? Have any subsequent researchers tested Blanchard's idea that some same-sex attracted men "[feminize] with hormones and surgery to blend into homophobic society as a 'straight woman'? What is the incidence of such individuals in the population? What demographic and socioeconomic characteristics do they have in common? How successful are HSTS in forming stable and fulfilling relationships with men? Do the male partners of HSTS share any characteristics? If gender critical people take the position that trans women are men in the case of AGP, is there any reason to take a different position with respect to HSTS?

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More real research is needed on all things "trans," including the AGP part. Blanchard himself says so. I've seen nothing credible contradicting his theory. Re Georgia: Yes, the fight against trans radicalism involves an acutely diverse group, including some radfems and fundamentalists. GA fundamentalists, however, have not yet warmed up to us based gays who are punching back against the transqueer predators sabotaging our gains from the past. After my testimony, their leader tweeted unsupportive things about us. So, yes we fight the good fight against radical trans even as we continue to have some hostile forces on our right flank. Nothing good in life comes easy, as they say. PS - BUT the folk on the right are not calling us ugly names, not spewing vulgarity, not threatening violence. That is only coming from the other direction, sadly.

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Great comment. "Transqueer predators . . ." Well said.

I am persuaded by gender researcher Eliza Mondegreen's analysis of the trans phenomenon among girls and young women:

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Until recently, researchers, clinicians, and parents understood something a lot like gender dysphoria to be a normal stage of adolescent development for teenage girls. Simply put, it is hard to grow up female. It can be hard to accept the changes to one’s body—like menstruation and breast development—and the way society responds to those changes. There have always been girls and young women who sought a way out of the developmental challenges puberty posed. They took off-ramps like anorexia or cutting. Today, trans identity is a super highway promising an escape from the discomfort of female adolescence. My research suggests that adolescent and young adult females are responding to common developmental pressures and seeking to fulfill basic developmental tasks through trans identification. This is not the same thing as being in any sense ‘born in the wrong body.’

Many of the young females I see in online trans communities are seeking an explanation for the distress they feel over their changing bodies. They often struggle with questions of identity. They may not know how to fit in with their peers. They are looking for a place to belong, a sense of direction in life, a purpose or cause to devote themselves to, and recognition for their uniqueness and for the changes they undergo as they move from childhood toward adulthood. They are also often looking for a scapegoat for difficulties in life. The belief that one is transgender offers a clear scapegoat: the female body itself, which can be disciplined into compliance with the new identity regime, much the way the anorexic disciplines her body through starvation. A transgender identity can be especially appealing when healthier developmental pathways are blocked, for whatever reason: because the whole world locked down during a pandemic, because a young person has too few friends and opportunities in real life, or a too-compliant personality, or because mental health difficulties and neurocognitive differences interfere with her ability to build a compelling life offline.

https://elizamondegreen.substack.com/p/my-testimony-for-quebecs-comite-de?utm_campaign=reaction&utm_medium=email&utm_source=substack&utm_content=post

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I also believe many young people are transitioning and/or embracing genderqueer identities because it's the current hip thing to do. In large urban areas, for many decades some groups of gay men have carried on like Peter Pan and his lost boys who didn't want to grow up. The result is all sorts of niche scenes. (Straight guys would be using the equivalent among of time to watch sports or hunt or do whatever it is they do.) Trans/queer is just the latest scene.

An irate trans ally can be as unhinged in an anonymous forum as the most uncivil Trumper.

Thank you for the good work you are doing!

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And yet, and yet... yes, the AGP hetero males.

But my whole (formerly LG and a few Bs in same-sex relationships) world is now littered with those those homosexual women who now deny their sex and sexual orientation - to say they are men or "non-binary," and "queer," etc... The call is definitely coming from inside (or at least wired through) the house.

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I believe that most of the girls and women claiming to be gay men (disclosure: my daughter is one of them) are also victims of aggressive AGP activists who are actively targeting vulnerable people to convince that they are transgender. Since the trans activists believe that womanhood is defined by a love of sexy, revealing clothing, being treated as a sex object, having long hair, liking makeup, and being excessively concerned with one’s appearance, they are also convincing women who don’t conform to that definition that they are not actually women. Add that to the unfortunate psychology that’s more common in women to try to appease aggressive men, and a lot of women are identifying as men. Of course that doesn’t actually change their sexual orientation, though, so now they call themselves gay men. The ironic part is that it’s largely female psychological characteristics such as a tendency to be self-critical and a tendency to appease when faced with aggression that led them to call themselves men, not recognizing how very female this reaction is and how little they understand about what it actually means to be a man, gay or otherwise.

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Oh, if only all those vocal knee-jerk trans "allies" in the liberal mainstream media - Nicolle Wallace, Rachel Maddow, Charlie Sykes and Molly Jong-Fast come to mind - could read this! I have to think their understanding of the trans thing is much more rudimentary than what you've laid out here.

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I agree... my dtr was caught in this also. She is very supportive of her gay and lesbian friends, a couple of whom have now taken a step toward calling themselves trans. And in her angry teen righteousness she stands up for her friends, lumping them all in the same basket without knowing what I know (I don't 'discuss' anymore, because I'm 'xyz-phobic' , and don't want to risk falling off the tightrope and pushing her straight back in the trans mess.)

So...

I wonder if part of the way out of this growing harm to young people is actually getting into their forums and 're-educating' them in the same way they were inductive in the first place.

They have fury, fight and energy for causes.... imagine the support of the truth ifthey were actually part of the push back?

Could this be possible?

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It annoys me no end when a woman claims to be a gay man. Actual gay men have a lifetime of experience - emotional, physical, visual, etc. - with their own physical male bodies that no one born in a female body can ever know. That history must inform gay men's response to and experience of other men's bodies. Add the effects of a lifetime of male socialization - first as a male in one's family of origin, then as a closeted gay and finally hopefully as a fully out gay - and the idea of a trans gay man becomes utterly untenable and worthy only of pity.

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Part of what is happening, probably a very small part, is that women who were always very masculine could find refuge as butch lesbians in the women’s community. Some of these women were actually bisexual or heterosexual. They decided to live as men because of their masculinity, and subsequently became aware of their preference for male romantic partners. I have known some such people and read about others, such as the late Rex Cameron. And yes, this is a miserable predicament.

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Thank you for your helpful and informed insights!

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Another variation among lesbians who transition is that they form a relationship with another lesbian who has also transitioned. By the logic of trans ideology, since both women identify as men, they are now a gay male couple. (By the logic of human sexuality, they are a lesbian couple, albeit largely neutered depending on how far they’ve gone with surgeries.)

This is a tragic attempt to resolve two problems: internal and external homophobia and the desire to relate intimately with another woman.

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"By the logic of trans ideology, since both women identify as men, they are now a gay male couple."

What a travesty!

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Indeed.

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Yep - socially and in academia, corporate HR departments, schools and the white-collar world in general, those most active in pushing gender ideology are straight women obsessed with being "allies", not AGP men. https://open.substack.com/pub/kaeleytrillerharms/p/dear-white-liberal-women

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Thank you! Although I hear plenty of gay men and lesbians who agree with this point of view, most of us are older and not that into activism. I have, however, completely cut off the official « LGBT » organizations from my support and no longer have any interest in Gay Pride parades — not because I’m not proud to be gay, but because I’m not proud of the crazy ideologues who are running those organizations.

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Thank you very much for this and thank you to Jeff Cleghorn!

The typology from the 1980's and 1990's has not been shown to hold right now, since the rise of ROGD (the Tavistock had a handful of kids presenting each year in the early 2000's, by 2009 there were 34 boys, 17 girls, by 2016, there were 557 boys, the boys rose very quickly too, but the rise of the girls was ~4 times faster, there were over 1000 in 2016). There are a lot of ROGD boys it seems given what many of the desisters and detransitioners are saying. So it is not necessarily the case that if the person is heterosexual and male and has gender dysphoria that they are AGP.

https://www.rogdboys.org/

My understanding is that no one actually knows the breakdown of what fraction of young people with gender dysphoria have what "kind" of gender dysphoria right now.

There are also many AGP males who are not doing these destructive things. Joe Burgo sees many as patients I believe. Again, no one has numbers. But being AGP doesn't mean one is compelled to harm others.

Those people who are causing harm have a choice.

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The list of studies you give is useful but OLD! There is lots more where that came from and i suggest you curate them and have them avaiable as references. Keep up the good work.

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Please feel free to go to https:// greenalliance.sexbased rights.org for additional resources

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Well said. Thank you.

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Great writing Ben

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Excellent!❤️

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Thank you for speaking up.

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Stay the fuck away from other people’s kids. Stop grooming them in your tranny fashion cult ideology. That’s the best way to protect youth. And stop cutting parents out. Just stay the fuck away from kids. Do whatever you want with your adult orgy fetish parties. Leaves kids alone.

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There's a lot in here that I wouldn't argue with, but I don't believe Blanchard's typology holds up at all well. 'HSTS' aren't real transsexuals if they only get SRS so as to conform and AGP is only an adult form of transvestism which gets carried away. There's no mention of transsexuals who are clear in their feelings from their earliest age. I completely reject the suggestion that people who have had transsexual feelings since their earliest memories have a sexual paraphilia.

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Whether a man who fetishizes women’s clothing is a “true transsexual” has become besides the point, unfortunately. The political advocacy of these men has been very successful in enabling them to access women’s sports and prisons and generally break down the barriers of women’s sex-based rights through Title IX. This is why we have to talk about the AGPs.

The stereotype of aggressive male felons who identify as lesbians because they’re attracted to women is a reality. Open Reduxx.info any day of the week and it’s impossible not to come away with horrifying and shocking images and descriptions of atrocities committed by AGPs against women and children. The thing to remember is that this cohort of AGPs does not represent this population as a whole. They are convicted felons with severe mental illnesses. The identity marker that is most important about them is that they are MEN. With or without AGP, statistically speaking, men are far more violent than women, and women and children are their typical targets. It’s not about “gender,” it’s about sex.

But to the unsuspecting population at large, all trans-identified men fit the stereotype of a Ru Paul style drag queen: flaming, funny, and harmless, because they’re gay gay gay. When I mention to the uninformed that Bruce Jenner fathered six children with three different women, their jaws drop.

The conversation about AGP has to happen, and the best ones to educate the public would be those AGPs who, rather than denying that they exist, are willing to speak publicly against the transitioning of children and in favor of actual women’s sex-based rights.

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I don't contest that AGP and HSTS types exist, but the typology isn't complete. There are neurological intersex transsexuals who don't fit these profiles and have nothing to do with the things that bother you.

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Yes, I get that. No group is a monolith. I tried to make that point.

Intersex is in a separate category. If Blanchard didn't take that into account, he missed a big piece of the puzzle.

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Intersex is a tiny percentage of the population. True intersex, or individuals with true genetic difference (ie neither XX or XY), is extremely rate: .2% of the population.

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To whom you are attracted sexually is purely subjective and therefore cannot reasonably be contested by an outside observer.

Where you decide to live your life on a spectrum of superficial, stereotypical male to female attributes (and we all do) is also purely subjective and similarly cannot be questioned.

However, your biological sex reflects an objective reality which cannot be changed by your subjective personal view and futile attempts to do so can result in serious health impacts to you as well as actual harms to members of the sex you are impersonating (especially women).

Finally, others who are grounded in objective reality should never be forced to accept your subjective version of your actual biological sex.

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