I lived in France then Holland through the 90’s and I have the feeling there’s going to be a very unpleasant explosion taking a lot of trans to a place they didn’t want to go in public, being called out, harassed and not left alone.
All movements go through cycles. This one manages to keep nobody in reserve to provide support as they offend all women simultaneously, and all men who respect women, and all people who enjoy humor which may not be gentle to a particular group.
Dutch and French adults don’t really give a shit about feelings, an observation I have from my experience living there. There is no instinct to not offend which Americans have, no being nice.
Brava! Such a great summary showing in this globalized world everything is the same. I am reminded of the 'banality of evil' - how the self-interested smug, stupid people in charge of media, govt institutions and NGOs and their obfuscation and suppression of the actual issues leads to active harm, harm to the children undergoing surgery, harm to women literally just trying to speak, harm to lesbians and women who no longer have access to private spaces.
Just as bad as these direct harms is the insanity and creeping authoritarianism, which reduces the resolution of the issues and prevents critical thinking. Where are the leaders that understand this rot within our institutions and will stand up and do something?
In the United States we have Donald Trump - look what they tried to do to him - lock him up and/or kill him - Day 1 - 2 sexes period! If he accomplishes nothing else - that is something!
Thank you for doing this work! I still haven't got my answer from Substack (can't log onto my blog via browser) but when I do I am also translating this post for the Balkans, for Ex Yugoslavia. The orgs here work on the same principles, yet we don't even have gay marriage.
This is absolutely brilliant. Especially the second half. My mind exploded. This ideology has become its own self fed machine. As you say once the Normie’s wake up and recognize what has been happening to their society and women recognize what has happened to the erasure of their rights and they speak up, that very speaking up and speaking out, and pushing back, becomes the literal fuel that the machine eats in order to feed itself and grow stronger. Self manufactured, so-called genocide in order to claim that they need more resources, more action, more rights, more protections, and they must get the children on board sooner and younger. It’s like a poisonous snake that is eating itself to stay alive. This is unbelievable. I need to put more clarity on this concept in my head. I knew it, but couldn’t isolate it like you did here. Oh, and the wizards of Oz – the billionaires who truly started this, and initially funded the activism – just sit back and watch their little minions scream, and yell and go out of their minds doing all of the work. The billionaires just need to add a little money here and there and give a little direction here and there from time to time. Truly despicable. Dystopian.
The view from the US. These are a series of posts by Wesley Yang on X:
1/29/2025
“There are no "anti-trans extremists."
“There is a political party and professional apparatus that put male rapists and murderers in women's prisons, propagandized kindergartners that any of them could change sex, forced taxpayers and insurance customers to fund electrolysis and facial feminization surgeries, put any boy or man who claimed to be female into changing rooms with your daughters, forced you to declare the gender identity of your toddler at the doctor's office, deceived parents about the social transition of their children at school, banned psychological exploration of the mental health comorbidities that manifest as trans-ideation in the midst of an online social contagion generating 5000 percent increases in trans identification among youth, fined all-female nude spas run by immigrants for excluding men with penises who claimed to be women for violating the human rights of those men, imposed men on the athletic playing fields with your daughters, told thousands of parents to submit to the chemical castration of their children to avert imminent suicide risk for which no evidence has ever existed, subjected thousands of children to macabre sex changes procedures while lying about the existence of an evidence base where none ever existed while claiming on the basis of no evidence that the procedures were life-saving, investigated parents who refused to put their children on a pipeline to a lifetime of medicalized self-harm by pretending they had changed sex and sought to seize custody of them, and threatened to unperson you, attack your livelihood and leave you ostracized if you resisted it in any way with the aid of the monopolistic tech platforms that control the circulation of speech and money around the globe in a new surveillance and censorship regime that sought to dismantle biological reality in the name of narcissistic fantasies that it intended to entrench as the only truth while corrupting the truth-seeking apparatus of science itself -- and there is a majority of normal people in both parties who oppose this nonsense and want it stopped.”
6/20/2025
“Transgenderism must revert to being a form of private eccentricity. Recognition as one's preferred gender can be privately negotiated but with no coercion by any entity private or public. We all have an absolute right to affirm or not affirm, believe or not believe, that gender identity exists, that no one can infringe.
Sex segregated spaces and activities remain segregated by sex, not "gender identity."
Adults are free to inflict bodily self-harm on themselves in pursuit of an appearance they like but outside of any pretense of a medical protocol -- these are cosmetic procedures that come with no promises to relieve dysphoria or unlock an authentic self and the cost is borne solely by the person seeking them. Any such promises constitute consumer fraud. Children are of course unable to consent to such procedures.
The state has no role in affirming any aspect of cross-gender ideation, avoids proselytizing to children in schools or to anyone else in any interface it has with the public. The person who has inflicted bodily self-harm on his sex traits is no more a distinct class of person to whom special privileges or protections can be conferred than a person who has covered his face in tattoos. The person who believes with all his heart that he is a woman at heart and would die if others don't recognize him as such imposes no duty on any other person to share in that belief or to pretend to share in it. That person must develop resiliency about living in a pluralistic, liberal, democratic society where every person has a right to belief and a corollary right to unbelief that no one may legitimately infringe.
Any and all deviations from this resolution are morally illegitimate and practically untenable.
The attempt to turn a private eccentricity into a social cause that justified the remaking of society was a ghastly and destructive mistake. It was made inevitable by certain facets of the culture and certain aspects of our politics. We must learn the lesson that experience has now taught us.”
Thanks so much for this detailed and thoroughly researched piece. So the only people above satire are queer gender-identity cultists, and we all have a sacred duty to respect their orthodoxy and have no right to disbelief, and will get mobbed, fired, vilified, fined and possibly gailed for heresy should we not comply. This does not apply to any other religion in the West, only to gender-identity. I'm a philosophical theologian trying to write about this (GCPT substack) and I am amazed at how religious - state and corporation backed religious - this whole space is. Fabulous work Roisin; many thanks.
I actually don’t have a problem with Cactus joking about gender or even about Christine & the Queens. Comedy should be allowed to touch everything.
What bothers me here isn’t the sketch, it’s the way you frame it. You say you’re just defending satire and free speech, but this piece goes way beyond that: « sex clowns », « perverts », « autogynephiles », « spoilt toddlers », « mentally ill girls », prostitutes as punchlines… You don’t just defend the right to laugh, you spend 10,000 words telling your readers that trans people are ridiculous, dangerous or sexually deviant and that anyone who supports them is on the take. That’s not a defence of humour, it’s a long invitation to despise a tiny minority.
The same with the NGOs: you take relatively modest public funding and standard anti-discrimination work and inflate it into a « rainbow mafia » running a censorship regime. Whenever there’s data or surveys about discrimination, you assume bad faith, but your own anecdotes, interpretations and psychologising are treated as hard truth. If a survey counts too many things as « violence », that’s a real methodological problem. It still doesn’t magically make that harassment, assault and job discrimination disappear, or that « Belgium is the best place in the world to pretend to be in the wrong body ».
You’re right, there’s a legitimate debate about hate-speech law, self-ID and what we want public broadcasters to do. But that debate won’t get any more honest by reducing trans women to porn categories, trans men to gullible hysterical girls, and drag artists to « sex clowns on the payroll ». You don’t need that level of dehumanisation to defend satire. You use it because it feels good to kick downwards, and call it bravery.
I’ve read your definition of « trans »: autogynephilic men, hysterical girls and a few murdered sex workers you can name-drop when useful. That’s exactly what I’m pushing back on.
If that’s not what you mean, clarify it. If it is what you mean, then my point about dehumanisation still stands.
Doesn’t this remind one of the Chinese Cultural Revolution? This is why it is clear that the trans ideology is the most dangerous authoritarian ideology of this century and must be squashed like a poisonous monster.
A sad state of affairs when sex realists, female athletes and children who are on the fast track to medicalization find political support from authoritarian conmen and right-wing extremists, even as they deny women's reproductive and labor rights...
Frightening, the reach these grifters have managed. The lack of humour these clowns have is staggering, although not a surprise given the fragility of their 'identities,' and/or the sensitivity of their 'male egos' - diddums!
Jesus. I just don’t care enough about this trans BS to read this treatise. Though I get the point of it. Got that in the first 60 seconds of reading. Thanks for the data though.
Wow! Such a comprehensive recounting of Belgium's "first big trans tantrum"! Thank you! The Belgium public seems to remain tethered to reality.
Superb article, everyone should read it.
I lived in France then Holland through the 90’s and I have the feeling there’s going to be a very unpleasant explosion taking a lot of trans to a place they didn’t want to go in public, being called out, harassed and not left alone.
All movements go through cycles. This one manages to keep nobody in reserve to provide support as they offend all women simultaneously, and all men who respect women, and all people who enjoy humor which may not be gentle to a particular group.
Dutch and French adults don’t really give a shit about feelings, an observation I have from my experience living there. There is no instinct to not offend which Americans have, no being nice.
There is an instinct to fairness.
This will be trans downfall in the region.
Again, superb writing.
Een van mijn beste vrienden is Nederlander, net als mijn man. Een sterke, maar toch makkelijke familie om mee om te gaan.
Zeker. Toch leuk mensen…
Brava! Such a great summary showing in this globalized world everything is the same. I am reminded of the 'banality of evil' - how the self-interested smug, stupid people in charge of media, govt institutions and NGOs and their obfuscation and suppression of the actual issues leads to active harm, harm to the children undergoing surgery, harm to women literally just trying to speak, harm to lesbians and women who no longer have access to private spaces.
Just as bad as these direct harms is the insanity and creeping authoritarianism, which reduces the resolution of the issues and prevents critical thinking. Where are the leaders that understand this rot within our institutions and will stand up and do something?
In the United States we have Donald Trump - look what they tried to do to him - lock him up and/or kill him - Day 1 - 2 sexes period! If he accomplishes nothing else - that is something!
Absolutely brilliant.
I'm speechless, use emojis instead 🙌🏻😍👏🏻💚🤍💜
Thank you for doing this work! I still haven't got my answer from Substack (can't log onto my blog via browser) but when I do I am also translating this post for the Balkans, for Ex Yugoslavia. The orgs here work on the same principles, yet we don't even have gay marriage.
This is absolutely brilliant. Especially the second half. My mind exploded. This ideology has become its own self fed machine. As you say once the Normie’s wake up and recognize what has been happening to their society and women recognize what has happened to the erasure of their rights and they speak up, that very speaking up and speaking out, and pushing back, becomes the literal fuel that the machine eats in order to feed itself and grow stronger. Self manufactured, so-called genocide in order to claim that they need more resources, more action, more rights, more protections, and they must get the children on board sooner and younger. It’s like a poisonous snake that is eating itself to stay alive. This is unbelievable. I need to put more clarity on this concept in my head. I knew it, but couldn’t isolate it like you did here. Oh, and the wizards of Oz – the billionaires who truly started this, and initially funded the activism – just sit back and watch their little minions scream, and yell and go out of their minds doing all of the work. The billionaires just need to add a little money here and there and give a little direction here and there from time to time. Truly despicable. Dystopian.
Excellent, such a well written piece. Thank you.
I think I'd enjoy that show. Great read here!
The view from the US. These are a series of posts by Wesley Yang on X:
1/29/2025
“There are no "anti-trans extremists."
“There is a political party and professional apparatus that put male rapists and murderers in women's prisons, propagandized kindergartners that any of them could change sex, forced taxpayers and insurance customers to fund electrolysis and facial feminization surgeries, put any boy or man who claimed to be female into changing rooms with your daughters, forced you to declare the gender identity of your toddler at the doctor's office, deceived parents about the social transition of their children at school, banned psychological exploration of the mental health comorbidities that manifest as trans-ideation in the midst of an online social contagion generating 5000 percent increases in trans identification among youth, fined all-female nude spas run by immigrants for excluding men with penises who claimed to be women for violating the human rights of those men, imposed men on the athletic playing fields with your daughters, told thousands of parents to submit to the chemical castration of their children to avert imminent suicide risk for which no evidence has ever existed, subjected thousands of children to macabre sex changes procedures while lying about the existence of an evidence base where none ever existed while claiming on the basis of no evidence that the procedures were life-saving, investigated parents who refused to put their children on a pipeline to a lifetime of medicalized self-harm by pretending they had changed sex and sought to seize custody of them, and threatened to unperson you, attack your livelihood and leave you ostracized if you resisted it in any way with the aid of the monopolistic tech platforms that control the circulation of speech and money around the globe in a new surveillance and censorship regime that sought to dismantle biological reality in the name of narcissistic fantasies that it intended to entrench as the only truth while corrupting the truth-seeking apparatus of science itself -- and there is a majority of normal people in both parties who oppose this nonsense and want it stopped.”
6/20/2025
“Transgenderism must revert to being a form of private eccentricity. Recognition as one's preferred gender can be privately negotiated but with no coercion by any entity private or public. We all have an absolute right to affirm or not affirm, believe or not believe, that gender identity exists, that no one can infringe.
Sex segregated spaces and activities remain segregated by sex, not "gender identity."
Adults are free to inflict bodily self-harm on themselves in pursuit of an appearance they like but outside of any pretense of a medical protocol -- these are cosmetic procedures that come with no promises to relieve dysphoria or unlock an authentic self and the cost is borne solely by the person seeking them. Any such promises constitute consumer fraud. Children are of course unable to consent to such procedures.
The state has no role in affirming any aspect of cross-gender ideation, avoids proselytizing to children in schools or to anyone else in any interface it has with the public. The person who has inflicted bodily self-harm on his sex traits is no more a distinct class of person to whom special privileges or protections can be conferred than a person who has covered his face in tattoos. The person who believes with all his heart that he is a woman at heart and would die if others don't recognize him as such imposes no duty on any other person to share in that belief or to pretend to share in it. That person must develop resiliency about living in a pluralistic, liberal, democratic society where every person has a right to belief and a corollary right to unbelief that no one may legitimately infringe.
Any and all deviations from this resolution are morally illegitimate and practically untenable.
The attempt to turn a private eccentricity into a social cause that justified the remaking of society was a ghastly and destructive mistake. It was made inevitable by certain facets of the culture and certain aspects of our politics. We must learn the lesson that experience has now taught us.”
Thanks so much for this detailed and thoroughly researched piece. So the only people above satire are queer gender-identity cultists, and we all have a sacred duty to respect their orthodoxy and have no right to disbelief, and will get mobbed, fired, vilified, fined and possibly gailed for heresy should we not comply. This does not apply to any other religion in the West, only to gender-identity. I'm a philosophical theologian trying to write about this (GCPT substack) and I am amazed at how religious - state and corporation backed religious - this whole space is. Fabulous work Roisin; many thanks.
I actually don’t have a problem with Cactus joking about gender or even about Christine & the Queens. Comedy should be allowed to touch everything.
What bothers me here isn’t the sketch, it’s the way you frame it. You say you’re just defending satire and free speech, but this piece goes way beyond that: « sex clowns », « perverts », « autogynephiles », « spoilt toddlers », « mentally ill girls », prostitutes as punchlines… You don’t just defend the right to laugh, you spend 10,000 words telling your readers that trans people are ridiculous, dangerous or sexually deviant and that anyone who supports them is on the take. That’s not a defence of humour, it’s a long invitation to despise a tiny minority.
The same with the NGOs: you take relatively modest public funding and standard anti-discrimination work and inflate it into a « rainbow mafia » running a censorship regime. Whenever there’s data or surveys about discrimination, you assume bad faith, but your own anecdotes, interpretations and psychologising are treated as hard truth. If a survey counts too many things as « violence », that’s a real methodological problem. It still doesn’t magically make that harassment, assault and job discrimination disappear, or that « Belgium is the best place in the world to pretend to be in the wrong body ».
You’re right, there’s a legitimate debate about hate-speech law, self-ID and what we want public broadcasters to do. But that debate won’t get any more honest by reducing trans women to porn categories, trans men to gullible hysterical girls, and drag artists to « sex clowns on the payroll ». You don’t need that level of dehumanisation to defend satire. You use it because it feels good to kick downwards, and call it bravery.
You should learn what “trans” is and then get back to me.
I’ve read your definition of « trans »: autogynephilic men, hysterical girls and a few murdered sex workers you can name-drop when useful. That’s exactly what I’m pushing back on.
If that’s not what you mean, clarify it. If it is what you mean, then my point about dehumanisation still stands.
You can read my other articles. I don’t do commissions. ✌️
I’m not asking you to write on commission, I’m asking whether you stand by the way this piece defines « trans »
If the answer is « yes but I won’t say it out loud in the comments », then I think my point stands on its own.
Doesn’t this remind one of the Chinese Cultural Revolution? This is why it is clear that the trans ideology is the most dangerous authoritarian ideology of this century and must be squashed like a poisonous monster.
A sad state of affairs when sex realists, female athletes and children who are on the fast track to medicalization find political support from authoritarian conmen and right-wing extremists, even as they deny women's reproductive and labor rights...
Frightening, the reach these grifters have managed. The lack of humour these clowns have is staggering, although not a surprise given the fragility of their 'identities,' and/or the sensitivity of their 'male egos' - diddums!
Great writing.
Jesus. I just don’t care enough about this trans BS to read this treatise. Though I get the point of it. Got that in the first 60 seconds of reading. Thanks for the data though.