Poets and Storytellers United: Writers’ Pantry #65: The Complexities of Gender Id...

Poets and Storytellers United: Writers’ Pantry #65: The Complexities of Gender Id...: Some months ago, an acquaintance stopped talking to me after I congratulated them on completing a difficult project. I didn’t even know this...

This issue is too complex for me to address my entirety of thought on it. Suffice it to say, I align with J.K. Rowling, who said she respects “every trans person’s rights to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them.” She went on to say she would march “if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans. At the same time, my life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe it’s hateful to say so.”

There is a lot of misogyny in the gender identity movement, and that is my biggest problem with it. Referring to women as "menstruators," "birthing parents" and "chestfeeders" is utterly appalling to me. I also don't believe in putting children on a path to lifelong medicalization via puberty blockers, hormones, and surgery. No ethical surgeon would give a 13-year-old girl DD implants. Why do surgeons deem it ethical to remove the healthy breasts of a 13-year-old girl struggling with gender dysphoria?

Like J.K. Rowling, I have received death and rape threats and been branded a "TERF C*nt" for my concerns regarding the erasure of women and the rising number of young women wanting to take steps to transition to male.

Also like J.K. Rowling, I don't hate transgender people. My housemate is a bisexual transwoman. I'm very much a live and let live kind of person. But I think it's very dangerous to have an ideology where no-one is allowed to explore or question. Those who question gender ideology risk being ostracized, blacklisted, and even physically harmed. I consider this to be a very serious problem.

~Sly Has Spoken~

Sly's Feminist Book Club: Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier

 

Click here to read a sample from the book.

If you purchase the book through this link, I will receive a small commission from Amazon.

I read this book on the Scribd platform. The following is a copy of the review that I left there.

The review section is a testimony to why this book is necessary. The conversation around gender identity has become dogmatic. Did I agree with everything the author wrote? No, I did not. But scolding and name-calling accomplish nothing. The lack of nuance and the prevalence of ad hominem attacks in many of the reviews of this book is chilling.

The push to medically transition kids reminds me of the push to prescribe psych meds to anyone experiencing any degree of depression beginning in the mid-1980s. I was critical of this trend, stating that we really had no idea what the long-term effects of these medications were. However, to speak unfavorably of these medications was to invite derision. I feel that the main parties benefiting from both blanket prescription of psych medications and fast-tracking young people for medical transition are the pharmaceutical companies.

To be critical of transition without careful consideration such as Buck Angel (a trans man) describes is not hatred of trans people. But any expression of doubt in the current trans dogma immediately leads to accusations of "transphobia." This lack of nuance helps no-one, particularly not the vulnerable young people who are sent down a path of irreversible medicalization with no consideration given at all to whether that is really in their best interest.

Whether or not one is in complete agreement with the author, she provides a necessary voice of reason regarding an issue which even the medical and scientific communities refuse to view or discuss in a nuanced fashion.

~Sly Has Spoken~

Royalty-free image by Julia Henze 

Purchased from 123rf.com

The Icky, Sticky, Nit-Picky Legalese If You Please (Or Don't Please)

 

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অভিক্ষেপ/ Projection: The Fest #TheKiss @WEP

অভিক্ষেপ/ Projection: The Fest #TheKiss @WEP: The Fest In Saam Ved it was uttered:   अयं बन्धुरयं नेति गणना लघुचेतसाम् । (ayam bondhuryam neti gonona laghuchetasam) उदारचरितानां तु ...

The festival was fun to read about, but a little too wild for my tastes. In spite of the fact that I write erotica, I'm quite a reserved soul in real life.

I find people kissing in public less bothersome than people urinating in public!

There Is No Such Thing as a Lesbian With a Penis!

The BBC Promotes Transing Children

 

Written in response to a post by Stephanie Davies-Arai on Transgender Trend.

https://www.transgendertrend.com/bbc-adult-trans-activist-agenda-children/

A million thanks, Stephanie. It's so important to keep fighting to shine the light on the truth.  The 'transwomen are women" rhetoric and the idea that there are ten million genders, one of which happens to be "woman," are terribly harmful beliefs. Without sites like Transgender Trend to provide counterpoints to these arguments, people will just accept them as fact, because if they don't, they will be branded "transphobic," which in these times is the kiss of death.

Just like phrenology and lobotomies, transgenderism is pseudoscience.  Just like thalidomide and antidepressants, puberty blockers are dangerous medications that should not be prescribed without very careful consideration. Yet just like thalidomide and antidepressants, puberty blockers are being touted as not only safe but "life-saving," and anyone who dares question their use is demonized.

I am not saying that there aren't people who feel that medical transition is the only way to overcome their dysphoria, but it should be the last resort, not the first option. Children should never be put on puberty blockers or have healthy body parts removed because of dysphoria.

~Sly Has Spoken~

Image copyright Julia Henze

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The Unfunny Woke Joke

 

The following is my response to an excellent post by Carrie-Anne Brown about authors and publishers in the YA genre capitulating to the Wokescolds.

https://carrieannebrownian.wordpress.com/2020/12/09/remember-when-ya-wasnt-a-woke-joke

Agree 1000%. I am so sick of the Wokerati invading every aspect of people's lives. They are so toxic and hostile. Sometimes I think that if I see pronouns in one more person's bio, I'm going to scream. My pronouns happen to be f**k/off.

The Wokies vehemently attacked J.K. Rowling, accusing her of transphobia, for speaking in defense of Maya Forstater, a female academic who was also accused of transphobia. Rowling also had the audacity to point out that women, aka the adult human female kind, are the people who have periods. "Menstruators" is horribly demeaning, and saying "menstruating people" is ridiculous, when there is only one kind of person who menstruates: the female kind. Many of Rowling's attackers made death and rape threats. 

Rowling has never said that she hates trans people. In fact, she has said that she would stand with them against anyone threatening their well-being or rights.

You probably already know all this. 

I have to keep separate Twitter accounts, one for my business and writing pursuits, and another where I can express my political views. 

Joe McCarthy would be so proud of the Woke, don't you think?

Same Old Spell: A Feminist Choka

  

Free use image copyright Javier Rodriguez on Pixabay

https://pixabay.com/photos/women-portrait-feminism-graffiti-54433/

Translation: we always have to recreate a tongue that shows respect for the woman if we walked for a moment in her shoes we would feel indignant

the magic has gone

from the soulless holy days

nothing is special

remember childhood

when holidays were magic

the veil was thinner

at midnight we heard

the spirit of the season

singing lullaby

now what goes between

disdain in each eye contact

when strangers first meet

no magic words now

can't compensate for the hate

fear of the unknown

like our ancestors

demand self-deprecation

from every woman

measuring her worth

based on the size of her hips

is misogyny

aura of the past

surrounding the present time

fertile ground for hate

new wokeness seems

it's the same misogyny

with a fresh accent

will we ever wake

will truth see the light of day

blowing in the wind

~cie~

noted

Hate has many faces, all of them ugly. This poem addresses the ways in which the misogyny that distressed me as a young girl, inspiring me to secretly declare myself a feminist when I was eight years old, is alive and well today with a new coat of paint. 

Women are no longer expected by society as a whole to live on an allowance doled out by their patronizing husbands while they keep a spotless house, cook a perfect dinner, and populate the world. We are, however, still expected to be helpmeets to men, to not have too many aspirations of our own, to keep our discomfort to ourselves, to capitulate to the demands of others, and to look like a Stepford wife with sex-hungry eyes and the body of a teenage girl who happens to have perfect double d-cup breasts while doing so.

Women who speak up for the needs and rights of women are still threatened with corrective rape and called all manner of humiliating names. These days, these threats are made in the name of "wokeness" and a perverse brand of "inclusivity" that excludes women while calling itself "feminism" and in which women are shouted down for using words to describe our own anatomy and health issues or for using words such as "mother" or "breastfeeding." Meanwhile, nobody seems to have a problem with the word "father," or with anyone saying that men get prostate cancer, and men are not expected to share their changing rooms with those with female anatomy for the sake of "inclusivity."

It's a step well backward in the name of progress. I really should not be surprised that women are the ones to suffer under the new woke boss, who just happens to be the same as the old, unwoke boss but is wearing a hip new suit and drinking a fair-trade latte while he tweets out profanity-laced pejoratives to the "transphobic" cunts who dare to question why we can't say the word "woman" when talking about women's health and who take issue with the idea of sharing our changing rooms with a bearded man with meat and veg fully intact. Women who wish to have a female caregiver or health care provider for intimate care or invasive examinations are labeled hateful and told that we are "weaponizing our trauma."

Those who have been smart enough to avoid Twitter (I was for a long time, but, unfortunately, the book reviews and promotions necessitated me taking it up again) may not be aware of these peculiar developments and think that I am being overly dramatic. Sadly, I am not.

I have become more aware than ever in the past five years that both the right and the left hate women. The right clothes their hate in "family values" and religious doctrine while the left demands that women be "inclusive" and "flexible", by which they mean framing women's issues to include men, all while looking and acting like porn stars 24-7.

And that is the delightful place from which today's happy little verse springs.

the prompts

https://chevrefeuillescarpediem.blogspot.com/2020/10/carpe-diem-celebrates-its-8th_26.html

https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2020/10/26/wordle-212/

http://www.octpowrimo.com/2020/10/octpowrimo-day-27.html

Word List

Magic

Holidays/Holy Days

Ancestors

childhood

special

veil

between

Midnight

Aura

Hips

Strangers

Self-Deprecation

Words

Disdain

Find

Woman

Lullaby

Compensate

Accent

Eye Contact

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The Icky, Sticky, Nit-Picky Legalese If You Please (Or Don't Please)

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Quoting portions of the post for educational or review purposes is acceptable if proper credit is given.