Right at the beginning of your story you miss a very important piece of information that explains a lot but is hardly ever mentioned. You can’t be blamed for that because it has been kept a secret.
There are two universities in Amsterdam, the so-called Free University (Vrije universiteit) and the University of Amsterdam. The (in)famous gender clinic is at the Free University which was founded and funded by a very strict, orthodox and traditional sect of the protestant part of Christianity. They split off from the Dutch Reformed church (Nederlands Hervormde Kerk) and called themself the Reformed Church (Gereformeerde kerk), with the main difference being the belief in predestination. The women do not cut their hair, wear no make-up, do not wear trousers or jeans, women are not allowed to vote or hold public office etc.
The reason they built their own university was to let church members have an academic education without being contaminated with other strains of thinking or other world beliefs.
In a nutshell, the University of Amsterdam, is the opposite; it is left wing, progressive, “woke” we would say now.
That the Free University was foremost in the transgender movement was always baffling, because that was portrayed as being so progressive. The Free University or their gender clinic never clarified their extremely conservative protestant position. Only now that the term “transing the gay away” has become better known, does it become clear what their agenda was all along.
In your article you use the names of the two Amsterdam universities interchangeably, and they must be distinguished as one being extremely right wing and the other left wing. I hope this adds some clarity.
Therefore, because of this hidden idealogical background and motivation, it is important to take every publication of that gender clinic with a handful, not a pinch or a grain, of salt.
This is such a wonderful piece. Will subscribe to read the second part. I’ve been arguing with a very intelligent and well-meaning older Brit on Facebook the last 2 days about classification of sex in humans, which he insists is difficult because sex is “bimodal, not a binary”, using DSDs and trans-identifying people as proof of this (eyeroll). So your two-parter couldn’t have come at a better time.
Perhaps some of Prof Richard Dawkin's statements on this might help your friend? Also Zach Elliot at https://theparadoxinstitute.org/ has great material on the sex binary.
The gentleman with whom I was arguing has said “This is a concept even Prof Richard Dawkins has a hard time with.” Which means he just thinks Dawkins to too thick or benighted to grasp that sex isn’t binary.
I swear, the argument as cordial as it was has surely taken a few months if not a whole year off my lifespan.
Edited to add: these arguments nearly always come down to the other person confusing the downstream effects of sex with sex itself. And they refuse to try to get their heads around that.
I had a long and quite thorough conversation about this with an old friend, just a few weeks ago.
He said, "You're female because you produce female hormones, right?"
I said, "That's backward. I produce female hormones because I'm female."
So much of the gender-enforcement narrative is based on arguments that are backward. If you can drill down to the basic argument, you can turn it around the right way, and then things all become so much clearer.
Yes. Another backward argument of theirs I was thinking of yesterday was their claim that “gender critical” people don’t like gender nonconformity. Excuse me? A trans person ceases to be gender nonconforming when they declare their gender to be opposite from their sex. A “trans woman” who performs excruciating stereotypes of bimbo femininity isn’t “gender nonconforming”—“she” is as conforming as it gets. After all, she’s “really” a woman, right? They want to have it both ways (except for when they’re too stupid to realize they’re contradicting themselves).
We are pro-gender nonconformity. After all, it’s usually the homosexuals who are truly gender nonconforming, as either gay men or lesbians (I’m referring to the real-world concepts of those two sexual orientations here). If, say, a highly gender nonconforming gay man (i.e. a very feminine man) calls himself a woman, and clams that he really *is* a woman, not any kind of man, and proceeds to do a caricature of femininity, he is, by his own words, gender conforming albeit in a regressive way—adhering to outdated, perhaps garish notions of what it looks like when one is a woman. Yet he’ll claim he’s gender nonconforming and that the JK Rowlings of the world hate him for it. Ugh!
Transgenderism is nothing but regressive conservative sexist gender-stereotypes. It's as conservative as you can get. In fact, some studies have shown that gender ideologues vote more conservative than liberal. The one guy who ran for office as a transy in BC (Tranada Central) ran as a Conservative.
Conservative men OPPOSE women's rights. And as long as oppression exists, there will always be sadistic oppressors who try to steal the identity of those they oppress.
That's why gender ideology is being funded by men like Republican billionaire James Pritzker and Conservative Canadian mining mogul Robert Quarterman.
As far as gay men, the only good friend I've lost to this stupid lobby was a gay man who refused to recognize women's rights because he'd once had a gay friend who decided to "become" a woman. Because that guy had to jump through a bunch of hoops decades ago in order to be able to legally violate women's spaces, my friend believed that it was fine (O, the suffering of that gay man!) and also still relevant.
Misogyny is rife among certain subcultures of gay men. They hate our guts.
"the argument as cordial as it was has surely taken a few months if not a whole year off my lifespan."
Lol! I understand that feeling. I brought up Prof Dawkins's statements on DSDs still showing sex is a binary at work to a colleague who thinks that "intersex" is an identity. I swear he started to channel Judith Butler. Somewhere in his blathering he compared Dawkins' understanding of biological sex to that of Linus Pauling's idea that Vit C was a cure-all. I was WTF? One of the genderists' favorite techniques -- run off on a tangent so as to not speak to the point.
Thank you for this insightful article. It helped me understand why LGBTQ+ training materials at my former employer, Procter & Gamble, treated “intersex” as part of transgender explanations.
I have MRKH, which is not intersex. I raised concerns and asked LGBTQ+ ally leaders to correct this and to engage in open discussion about the claim that intersex is a “third sex.” Instead, I was disciplined and threatened with termination if I did not remain silent. I eventually left the company and filed a lawsuit. The first hearing is on December 22 at the Tokyo District Court.
My ex worked at Darwin (Northern Territory) rape crisis in 1990, and I recall her telling me about a trans-identifying dude who came in wanting support. He explained he’d always felt like a woman and that a scan he’d had as an adult discovered “a functioning uterus and ovaries inside”.
Maybe “I’m intersex” has always been part of the mythology. IIRC the centre had a no man policy so my ex said turned him away – nicely of course.😃
I am imagining the putatively “functioning uterus” puffing along like a steam engine in an early Mickey Mouse reel ( “ they said the scan shows it toots and blows steam and everything!”)
> I know these labels are not very popular, and that the progressive thing to do would be to abandon the notions of masculine and feminine altogether because they reinforce the idea that there is a way for a man to be and a way for a woman to be. That’s very nice. But it’s not realistic.
I feel like this is a wrong accusation. The exact opposite of this is what has happened with progressives. All progressives do is analyze what flavor of gay/lesbian/butch/twink/top/bottom whatever everyone is, and then make new flags for it, and new pronouns and micro niche labels and memes and communities, etc. There is no progressive taboo at all on categorizing people by how outwardly gender non-conforming they are. These labels are very very very very popular. In fact the categories trans and cis seem to function more as insider vs outsider terms for that culture. If you’ve ever participated in a conversation about sitting like a bisexual, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
Ah. I am sick to my soul. When I started looking into this, I had no idea how deep this rabbit hole goes.
They seem to have a textbook on how to worm in and turn a culture upside down, drowning in lies. You gotta admit it: that's quite an accomplishment if you are looking to ruin everything you touch.
You may be interested in this story. I went to University of Maryland Law School in Baltimore and one day a few of us were having a beer and listening to a Baltimore PI (Personal Injury) lawyer tell us all a war story of the “you’re not gonna believe this” variety. This was in 1995 and he was recalling a case from 1985 or so. His client was what we have since come to call a “de-transitioner”. As your piece notes the protocol at the time was for a transition to take place only after a period (a year?) of talk therapy. This particular therapist was one of a group (ahem) “trained” (those are scare quotes btw) for this work. So our patient John Doe is in there, months into this therapy, when he has a certain realization. AS ONE DOES IN THERAPY. He says something like “Hey wait a minute … it JUST NOW occurs to me that this whole wanting-to-be-a-woman thing is the product of my fucked up relationship with my mother!”
His therapist thereupon promptly kicks the “therapy” (scare quotes again) into overdrive and runs over and squashes that idea: “Nope, you’re a transsexual and this is the ONLY CURE, etc.” That’s not even the most fucked up thing that happens in his therapy but John Doe is duly convinced that sex “re-assignment” is the only cure and goes through with it … and eventually decides that he needs to sue everybody involved because he’s been sold a bill of goods. All of us had the same reaction which was to say “Jesus Christ!” While instinctively grabbing at our crotches. It was only years later that I read about the David Reimer (sp?) case and figured out that this therapist must have been associated in some way with John Money’s Johns Hopkins Gender Clinic.
Right at the beginning of your story you miss a very important piece of information that explains a lot but is hardly ever mentioned. You can’t be blamed for that because it has been kept a secret.
There are two universities in Amsterdam, the so-called Free University (Vrije universiteit) and the University of Amsterdam. The (in)famous gender clinic is at the Free University which was founded and funded by a very strict, orthodox and traditional sect of the protestant part of Christianity. They split off from the Dutch Reformed church (Nederlands Hervormde Kerk) and called themself the Reformed Church (Gereformeerde kerk), with the main difference being the belief in predestination. The women do not cut their hair, wear no make-up, do not wear trousers or jeans, women are not allowed to vote or hold public office etc.
The reason they built their own university was to let church members have an academic education without being contaminated with other strains of thinking or other world beliefs.
In a nutshell, the University of Amsterdam, is the opposite; it is left wing, progressive, “woke” we would say now.
That the Free University was foremost in the transgender movement was always baffling, because that was portrayed as being so progressive. The Free University or their gender clinic never clarified their extremely conservative protestant position. Only now that the term “transing the gay away” has become better known, does it become clear what their agenda was all along.
In your article you use the names of the two Amsterdam universities interchangeably, and they must be distinguished as one being extremely right wing and the other left wing. I hope this adds some clarity.
Therefore, because of this hidden idealogical background and motivation, it is important to take every publication of that gender clinic with a handful, not a pinch or a grain, of salt.
Thank you for this important clarification.
The UvA doesn't have a medical school and the VU had been politically almost indistinguishable from the VU for many years.
An incredible amount of work has gone into producing this text. Repect for, thanks to, researcher - journalist - writer.
This is such a wonderful piece. Will subscribe to read the second part. I’ve been arguing with a very intelligent and well-meaning older Brit on Facebook the last 2 days about classification of sex in humans, which he insists is difficult because sex is “bimodal, not a binary”, using DSDs and trans-identifying people as proof of this (eyeroll). So your two-parter couldn’t have come at a better time.
Perhaps some of Prof Richard Dawkin's statements on this might help your friend? Also Zach Elliot at https://theparadoxinstitute.org/ has great material on the sex binary.
The gentleman with whom I was arguing has said “This is a concept even Prof Richard Dawkins has a hard time with.” Which means he just thinks Dawkins to too thick or benighted to grasp that sex isn’t binary.
I swear, the argument as cordial as it was has surely taken a few months if not a whole year off my lifespan.
Edited to add: these arguments nearly always come down to the other person confusing the downstream effects of sex with sex itself. And they refuse to try to get their heads around that.
I had a long and quite thorough conversation about this with an old friend, just a few weeks ago.
He said, "You're female because you produce female hormones, right?"
I said, "That's backward. I produce female hormones because I'm female."
So much of the gender-enforcement narrative is based on arguments that are backward. If you can drill down to the basic argument, you can turn it around the right way, and then things all become so much clearer.
Yes. Another backward argument of theirs I was thinking of yesterday was their claim that “gender critical” people don’t like gender nonconformity. Excuse me? A trans person ceases to be gender nonconforming when they declare their gender to be opposite from their sex. A “trans woman” who performs excruciating stereotypes of bimbo femininity isn’t “gender nonconforming”—“she” is as conforming as it gets. After all, she’s “really” a woman, right? They want to have it both ways (except for when they’re too stupid to realize they’re contradicting themselves).
We are pro-gender nonconformity. After all, it’s usually the homosexuals who are truly gender nonconforming, as either gay men or lesbians (I’m referring to the real-world concepts of those two sexual orientations here). If, say, a highly gender nonconforming gay man (i.e. a very feminine man) calls himself a woman, and clams that he really *is* a woman, not any kind of man, and proceeds to do a caricature of femininity, he is, by his own words, gender conforming albeit in a regressive way—adhering to outdated, perhaps garish notions of what it looks like when one is a woman. Yet he’ll claim he’s gender nonconforming and that the JK Rowlings of the world hate him for it. Ugh!
Yes.
Transgenderism is nothing but regressive conservative sexist gender-stereotypes. It's as conservative as you can get. In fact, some studies have shown that gender ideologues vote more conservative than liberal. The one guy who ran for office as a transy in BC (Tranada Central) ran as a Conservative.
Transsexualism came from the right:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BkIQTu7BV2nifZ3sbSFpS7spWb9od3YU/view
Conservative men OPPOSE women's rights. And as long as oppression exists, there will always be sadistic oppressors who try to steal the identity of those they oppress.
That's why gender ideology is being funded by men like Republican billionaire James Pritzker and Conservative Canadian mining mogul Robert Quarterman.
As far as gay men, the only good friend I've lost to this stupid lobby was a gay man who refused to recognize women's rights because he'd once had a gay friend who decided to "become" a woman. Because that guy had to jump through a bunch of hoops decades ago in order to be able to legally violate women's spaces, my friend believed that it was fine (O, the suffering of that gay man!) and also still relevant.
Misogyny is rife among certain subcultures of gay men. They hate our guts.
"the argument as cordial as it was has surely taken a few months if not a whole year off my lifespan."
Lol! I understand that feeling. I brought up Prof Dawkins's statements on DSDs still showing sex is a binary at work to a colleague who thinks that "intersex" is an identity. I swear he started to channel Judith Butler. Somewhere in his blathering he compared Dawkins' understanding of biological sex to that of Linus Pauling's idea that Vit C was a cure-all. I was WTF? One of the genderists' favorite techniques -- run off on a tangent so as to not speak to the point.
I debated this with Kate "Chase" Strangio's aunt.
It was hair-raising.
Superb writing. Keep going. I’m breathless for the end.
Excellent! A very entertaining and well researched account of significant events that shaped trans activism.
"... ‘ten-stage’ phalloplasty at a London clinic (ten-stage is a euphemism for ‘things went horribly wrong’)"
Urrrrgh! You'd think this might have been a clue, but no. (giant eyeroll)
Thank you for this insightful article. It helped me understand why LGBTQ+ training materials at my former employer, Procter & Gamble, treated “intersex” as part of transgender explanations.
I have MRKH, which is not intersex. I raised concerns and asked LGBTQ+ ally leaders to correct this and to engage in open discussion about the claim that intersex is a “third sex.” Instead, I was disciplined and threatened with termination if I did not remain silent. I eventually left the company and filed a lawsuit. The first hearing is on December 22 at the Tokyo District Court.
I look forward to Part II.
Best of luck!
As Kara Dansky says, if we can be heard, we WILL win.
My ex worked at Darwin (Northern Territory) rape crisis in 1990, and I recall her telling me about a trans-identifying dude who came in wanting support. He explained he’d always felt like a woman and that a scan he’d had as an adult discovered “a functioning uterus and ovaries inside”.
Maybe “I’m intersex” has always been part of the mythology. IIRC the centre had a no man policy so my ex said turned him away – nicely of course.😃
I am imagining the putatively “functioning uterus” puffing along like a steam engine in an early Mickey Mouse reel ( “ they said the scan shows it toots and blows steam and everything!”)
I bet they were not functioning.
I bet he was lying. Every time one of these doods claims to be intersex, they become trans activists, not intersex advocates.
Yeah, I bet he was lying too. If he'd known for a fact he was a woman, he wouldn't have called himself "trans."
He knew he was a man.
😭
Wonderful essay
> I know these labels are not very popular, and that the progressive thing to do would be to abandon the notions of masculine and feminine altogether because they reinforce the idea that there is a way for a man to be and a way for a woman to be. That’s very nice. But it’s not realistic.
I feel like this is a wrong accusation. The exact opposite of this is what has happened with progressives. All progressives do is analyze what flavor of gay/lesbian/butch/twink/top/bottom whatever everyone is, and then make new flags for it, and new pronouns and micro niche labels and memes and communities, etc. There is no progressive taboo at all on categorizing people by how outwardly gender non-conforming they are. These labels are very very very very popular. In fact the categories trans and cis seem to function more as insider vs outsider terms for that culture. If you’ve ever participated in a conversation about sitting like a bisexual, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
It would have been funny if scientists did find a genetic biomarker test and 99% of trans didn't have it. Oh no!
🤣
Ah. I am sick to my soul. When I started looking into this, I had no idea how deep this rabbit hole goes.
They seem to have a textbook on how to worm in and turn a culture upside down, drowning in lies. You gotta admit it: that's quite an accomplishment if you are looking to ruin everything you touch.
You may be interested in this story. I went to University of Maryland Law School in Baltimore and one day a few of us were having a beer and listening to a Baltimore PI (Personal Injury) lawyer tell us all a war story of the “you’re not gonna believe this” variety. This was in 1995 and he was recalling a case from 1985 or so. His client was what we have since come to call a “de-transitioner”. As your piece notes the protocol at the time was for a transition to take place only after a period (a year?) of talk therapy. This particular therapist was one of a group (ahem) “trained” (those are scare quotes btw) for this work. So our patient John Doe is in there, months into this therapy, when he has a certain realization. AS ONE DOES IN THERAPY. He says something like “Hey wait a minute … it JUST NOW occurs to me that this whole wanting-to-be-a-woman thing is the product of my fucked up relationship with my mother!”
His therapist thereupon promptly kicks the “therapy” (scare quotes again) into overdrive and runs over and squashes that idea: “Nope, you’re a transsexual and this is the ONLY CURE, etc.” That’s not even the most fucked up thing that happens in his therapy but John Doe is duly convinced that sex “re-assignment” is the only cure and goes through with it … and eventually decides that he needs to sue everybody involved because he’s been sold a bill of goods. All of us had the same reaction which was to say “Jesus Christ!” While instinctively grabbing at our crotches. It was only years later that I read about the David Reimer (sp?) case and figured out that this therapist must have been associated in some way with John Money’s Johns Hopkins Gender Clinic.