Why LGBT People are Skeptical of Organized Politics | TaraElla Clips

This is an excerpt from an article by TaraElla.

I'm old enough to remember how organized conservatism created a moral panic over gay marriage, to distract from the fact that the 2003 Iraq War was unjustified, costly, and simply immoral.

If we allow organized conservatism to continue to link otherwise good values with discriminatory policies, traditional values like modesty, decency, family values and so on will suffer, because they will be associated by young people with homophobia and bigotry. In other words, organized conservatism is giving traditional values a bad name, by associating them with discriminatory policy. Anyone who wants to preserve traditional values should push back against this.

Why Trans People Aren't Reinforcing Gender Stereotypes | Trans Sandwiched

We need to dissect and debunk this myth, once and for all.

Today, I want to talk about the idea that trans people are 'reinforcing gender stereotypes'. This talking point is popular among certain feminists, and it is increasingly being heard outside the feminist context too. Therefore, I think it is important that we debunk this myth.

Are trans people reinforcing gender stereotypes in reality? I think the objective evidence actually suggests the opposite. Many trans women are not feminine, and many trans men are not masculine, at least in the traditional sense. Some trans women are indeed very feminine, and it should be their right to express their personality in whatever way they want to. However, it is still clear that, overall, trans people are less likely than non-trans people to conform to gender stereotypes, or feel a need to do so.

I guess some people think that trans people transition because they feel a need to fit into gender norms. However, the aforementioned evidence suggests otherwise. Trans people transition because of gender dysphoria, and this dysphoria is mostly physical for many trans people. Even trans women who dress in a stereotypically feminine way might be doing this because it makes them less dysphoric about their body. It is a well known phenomenon that some trans women start out presenting very feminine at first, but later dress in a more casual way, after the physical changes from hormone therapy lessen their physical dysphoria over time. The reason why trans women can't just be 'feminine men' is because the dysphoria is a physical thing, not a social norms thing.

Therefore, if your goal is to put an end to the restrictive and discriminatory gender stereotypes, trans people are not the ones standing in your way. Instead, there are reactionary forces out there which you should be fighting. These forces are often anti-trans too, motivated by religious reasons that they might not highlight in public. Indeed, some gender critical feminists have aligned with such reactionary forces, just because they are anti-trans. They are actually forming an alliance with the kind of people who represent everything they hate, because they can't see that trans people are not their actual enemy. Well funded reactionary propaganda also plays a role in maintaining this misguided alliance, and I think we need to talk about this more often.

In conclusion, trans people don't 'reinforcing gender stereotypes' any more than non-trans people. Trans people transition because of gender dysphoria, which is mostly a physical thing, rather than a social norms thing. Therefore, they are not the enemy when it comes to ending gender stereotypes. We need to be able to talk about this clearly, and work against reactionary propaganda that is promoting outdated misunderstandings in order to build an anti-trans political alliance.

The Problems with Trans / LGBT Culture Right Now | TaraElla Clips

This is an excerpt from LGBT People Shouldn’t Push the Rest of the World Away by TaraElla.

I have three main problems with LGBT culture as it stands. Firstly, it limits the life potential of LGBT people. Secondly, it encourages a hostile worldview about the rest of the world. And finally, it leads to an inability to rationally communicate our needs to the wider world, resulting in unnecessary conflict. As I will explain, a lot of these features can be explained by historical political influences, influences that I strongly believe we should shake off as soon as possible.

So how can we shake it off? I guess just to be aware of this influence, and why it’s ultimately bad for LGBT people, is the first step.

Trans People Need to Think of Ourselves as Normal Members of Society | Trans Realist

Fight against those who want to harm us, but don't overreact all the time

Today, I want to address a criticism of my work regularly raised by some trans people: that I am supposedly too tolerant of anti-trans bigotry, and fail to recognize that there are people out there who want to hurt us. Let me start with this: I certainly don't have an appeasement policy towards anti-trans forces. I have called out the dangerous agenda of truly anti-trans people many times just within this year, and I have also argued that we need legal recognition to protect us from anti-trans forces. I have also called out those who seek to downplay the suffering of gender dysphoria in particular.

However, it is also true that some parts of the trans community have repeatedly overreacted to what people are saying. A good example of this is last year's Dave Chappelle controversy. Chappelle's work has always been controversial. It's part of his brand. In last year's Netflix special, he made controversial jokes about many groups. However, trans people were the only ones who overreacted. Somehow, trans people seem to be the only ones to think that Chappelle being Chappelle was a major threat to them. This led to headline after headline highlighting the trans-related content in the special, as if he had made a whole special dedicated to trans issues. In reality, the trans stuff was only a small part of the program.

So how can we balance the need to call out and push back against those who really want to harm us, and the need to not overreact to every insignificant thing people say? I think the answer is just to 'act normal'. What I mean by this is we should think and act like we are normal members of society. What we need to do, is to stop thinking of ourselves as oppressed victims all the time. If we do this, we would stop overreacting to things that almost nobody else thinks is important. We would also stop pushing the rest of the world away by getting combative over minor things all the time. This way, it wouldn't feel exhausting for others to deal with trans people and trans issues.

On the other hand, we must still recognize that there are people out there who are vehemently anti-trans, who would even support things that would actively make trans people suffer. In the past year, some anti-trans activists have stated that they would want to make it more difficult for people to transition. A few have even said that, in their ideal world, they would like medical transition, the medically necessary treatment for gender dysphoria, to be banned. Given that no normal person would appease those who want them to suffer, it would just be very normal for trans people to call these people out and condemn their cruel positions. Indeed, if we left the Dave Chappelles of the world alone and save our rage for those who really want to harm us, I think we would gain a lot more credibility and support in mainstream society.

In conclusion, acting 'normal' towards the rest of the world is ultimately good for us, and to do that, we need to adopt a 'normal' mindset, i.e. stop thinking of ourselves as oppressed victims all the time. This would be the key to stop overreacting all the time. We still have to fight against anti-trans forces that really want to harm us, and that is also a natural part of a 'normal' mindset. After all, nobody would just allow others to harm them without fighting back, right?

Please Don't Be A Fake Trans Ally | TaraElla Clips

This is an excerpt from How to Make the Trans Community Respected Again by TaraElla.

My point is, if you don’t really want to help with the practical improvement of trans lives, please don’t pretend to be an ally and use us for your political program. To all you people using trans lives to promote your talking points of deconstruction, Foucauldian postmodernism, the Macusean Great Refusal, the 1960s style revolution and so on. As a trans person suffering the consequences, I’ve really had enough of it!

Classical Liberals Should Make Common Cause with the LGBT Community | TaraElla Clips

This is an excerpt from the article We Need to Call Out the Biased Coverage of Trans Issues by TaraElla.

To effectively make the case for the classical liberal social contract, we must make it work properly in practice. This includes making an effort to correct things that are not working well. At the very least, we need to call out the aforementioned unfair coverage of trans people and trans issues. If nothing else, free speech liberals taking a firm stance on this issue would at least stop the critical anarchists from painting all of us as hypocrites driven by a 'right-wing' agenda. This will save the reputation of classical liberalism in the long run, long after the current culture wars end up discrediting the ideologues on both sides. Moreover, by trying our best to call out bad practices, we might even end up changing them, at least to some extent. If we can use classical liberal means to fight the 'anti-woke' culture war reactionaries, and limit the damage that they can do, we will gain credibility among the LGBT community and its allies, and young people more generally. This will be a win-win situation, for both the LGBT community and classical liberal values like free speech.

How to Argue Against the New Anti-Trans Movement | Trans Realist

We Need to Identify the Source of the Problem and Respond Effectively

Today, I want to talk about an important problem: the increasingly extreme anti-trans attitude that has now become a dominant feature in the reactionary culture war part of the Right. The problem is getting so bad that, honestly, I have to say that I would be quite concerned even if I were not trans. Moral panics targeting minorities have a very troublesome history, which is why everyone should be worried about one that is clearly brewing. Moreover, the current anti-trans wave is increasingly showing signs that it is going to affect non-trans people too. Therefore, it is a problem that needs more attention. Here, I will examine what the problem looks like, what its root cause is, and how we can change things.

Part 1: The Problem

It all began as part of a 'pushback' against the excesses of trans activism, starting a few years ago. Back then, some trans activists repeatedly tried to cancel people they didn't agree with. They also began making demands that mainstream society change their language on many things, which was deemed to be unreasonable by many people. These developments brought together concerned parties from different parts of society, thinking they needed to push back against a movement that had become unreasonable. I, too, agreed that we should defend free speech, and I repeatedly stated my belief that such extreme actions were not going to help the trans community. However, we should remember that the activists described here are only a small part of the trans community, even if they are quite vocal. Many people involved in this 'pushback' were genuinely concerned about free speech. They had no ill will towards trans people, and they told me so repeatedly. However, others with an anti-trans agenda, often rooted in religious fundamentalism, were also riding this 'pushback' wave, hidden at first behind the more reasonable voices defending free speech. Over time, backed by powerful forces vehemently opposed to trans rights, these anti-trans people began to change the narrative, from concern about activist overreach, to seeing the whole trans community as the enemy, perhaps linked with other conspiracy theories on the far-right.

The increasing dehumanization of trans people allowed cruelty towards trans people to be normalized. After all, trans people weren't suffering people anymore, they were now enemies with a dangerous political agenda, who deserved whatever pushback that was coming their way. Anti-trans activists who openly state that they want to reduce the number of people who transition, and even one who stated that, in their ideal world, they want all medical transition to be banned, are now welcome as voices of common sense in trans skeptical circles. The fact that medical transition as treatment for gender dysphoria is medically indicated, and has a long history of use among adults with gender dysphoria, is basically never mentioned in these same circles. This has led to trivialization of gender dysphoria and the suffering it brings, which has led to real world effects, like Florida deciding to end Medicaid coverage for all medical transition treatments. Note that this applies to adult patients, some who have been followed up for many years, who have been assessed by their doctors as needing this treatment, because there is no other way to relieve their dysphoria. These patients receiving this treatment is certainly not controversial at all, from a clinical medicine point of view. Taking away others' medically necessary treatment is one of the most despicable things one can do, especially if it is to fulfill a culture war objective.

Moreover, the implications of this new anti-trans wave are now starting to spread beyond trans people. There is now an increasing fearmongering and demonization of gender non-conformity, which is affecting non-trans people too. Even some gender critical feminists have become concerned about this recently, which shows how bad it has become. Furthermore, there is now a very real concern that the rising anti-trans sentiment is fueling a return of religious right politics, that would have authoritarian implications in many areas of life, and not just limited to the LGBT community. As you can see, it is all becoming a major problem that those who are dedicated to free speech, free expression, and compassionate treatment for all, have rightly become very worried about.

Part 2: The Root Cause

To deal with a problem, we need to examine its root cause. Here, I believe the root cause is biased coverage. It all began with unfair coverage of trans people, which made us into the 'enemy' over time. The most extreme trans activists are highlighted all the time. Even the most unpopular and most uninfluential activists are given a platform to showcase their views, as long as it would reflect badly on the trans community. The coverage of trans issues also strongly skew towards the most controversial issues, with journalists, reporters and show hosts often encouraging an emotional response from their audiences. Meanwhile, the fact that 99% of the trans community consists of everyday trans people, who just want to relieve their gender dysphoria and get on with their lives with as little hassle as possible, is never mentioned.

Looking at the history of the problem, I believe left-leaning media was worse during the mid-2010s. At that point, the LGBT discourse on left-leaning media was captured by postmodernist voices, like those who thought that the very existence of pronouns were 'cisnormative', and old-school regular trans people with gender dysphoria were deemed not progressive enough for them. Back then, at least right-leaning media would feature some reasonable trans people, as a counterpoint to what was being platformed on the other side. However, as organized conservative politics began to take an anti-LGBT turn, right-leaning media stopped giving reasonable trans people a platform. Instead, they began to showcase only the most extreme activists, even more so than left-leaning media. Gender critical activists are often invited on to be the 'reasonable' voice, critiquing the 'trans movement' while normalizing hardline gender critical talking points. In contrast, while there are many reasonable trans people who are willing to talk about reasonable compromises, they are never given a chance to speak. All this contributes to a false picture that the trans community is full of extremists. The point is that, over time, we have been dehumanized, and turned into political enemies, as a result of this biased coverage.

Part 3: The Solution

The first step to change is to be aware of the problem. This is why I am trying my best to raise awareness all the time. The next step is to take action, to call out and push back against those who perpetuate the unfair coverage problem. No, it is not OK to repeatedly use postmodern gender activists as 'representation' of what trans people believe. It is not OK to pretend that gender studies 'experts' speak for us, and let them put words in our mouth. And it is certainly not OK to disproportionately feature the most radical trans activists because they bring in more clicks and revenue. In fact, I believe that media outlets that engage in this kind of behavior should probably be subject to a boycott, so as to correct for the problem of financial incentives, but that's another topic. We should also remember that basically all kinds of media outlets are currently guilty of the aforementioned behavior. Old school mainstream media, internet-based new media, progressive media, conservative media, so-called free speech media, they are all guilty, and they all need to be called out. Therefore, we need to push back against all of them, without discrimination. Only by acting to end this unfair coverage problem can the current anti-trans wave be defeated.