Medium: Where We Tolerate Trans Intolerance

"If we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed and tolerance with them." -Karl Popper

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It was the hate and abuse that “trans” activists [or Tralibans as I call them now, a year later, 4.30.22] threw at author J.K. Rowling that sparked my curiosity about the “trans” debate. I had no strong feelings on the subject; I guess because it had never occurred to me to think of “trans" identified people as a separate identity group less deserving than myself or any other homo sapiens member of human rights. Suggesting otherwise seemed preposterous, not worthy of debate. (Also, the idea to not call someone whatever he or she preferred, man, woman, uncle Bob—or George, like I demanded to be called when I was nine and a huge fan of Enid Blyton’s (widely banned) “Famous Five” books—seemed well, disrespectful [12.12.21: I will not use “preferred pronouns,” which is stupid and an underhanded way of forcing people to Newspeak]. But I’m getting ahead of myself.)

I was a professional journalist for years, and I was curious to see what Rowling could have written to earn herself such venom. I read her essay without finding a single objectionable sentence. But this was before I had familiarized myself with the bizarre “trans” ideology that demands we throw out medical science in favor of theories so obviously baseless and false, they’re an insult to anyone with half a brain: “[G]ender identity is the only medically supported determinant of sex. It is counter to medical science to use chromosomes, hormones, internal reproductive organs, external genitalia, or secondary sex characteristics to override gender identity [to classify] someone as male or female.” That is an under-oath statement from an M.D. (one of the medical “experts” whose bank accounts ride on whether science agrees that human genitalia are a reliable determinant of human sex). The doctor adds that “gender identity is innate, generally fixed.” Wait. Or is it? “Trans communities have always held room for… shifting identities…” Ah, who cares. Pick your choice. 

It’s almost funny until you discover that the AMA and the medical community at large are among those with only half a brain [I’ve been informed that ridiculing—and I am ridiculing the AMA, because they deserve it—someone by saying they have “half a cerebral hemisphere” is disrespectful to those who actually only have half a cerebral hemisphere. So I’ll capitulate and commit a style crime by repeating “half a brain.” Happy? English is my second language. I don’t always get it right]. Unfortunately, nowadays we can trust the golden rule, not science, to guide the medical profession: Follow the money, flout facts (see the “opioid [hysteria] epidemic). 

The online algorithm quickly sniffed out that I had read Rowling’s essay and began throwing “trans” material my way. The rhetoric had much in common with media coverage of the opioid [hysteria] epidemic, which relied heavily on misinformation, mangled statistics, and inflated claims to victimhood. “Trans” people are “the most vulnerable communities across the globe” (they’re not). Sorry, you 55 million people dying of starvation in the world’s top “extreme hunger hotspots.” The “violent deaths of 37 transgender and gender-nonconforming people” were described as an “epidemic of violence” by our president, the most prominent of Democratic politicians whose pandering to the anti-science, anti-reality demands of trans activists is certain lose them the House, Senate, and the White House to the American fascist movement. “Epidemic”? Please. Thirty-seven violent deaths are horrible and 37 too many. But it’s not an “epidemic.”

This Medium Post, by one Jude Ellison Sade Doyle, a “trans” activist (who has 43K Twitter followers; I think I might have 1 ½) was, in my view, so hateful, not to mention deceptive, that I couldn’t resist picking it apart and publishing the results. It never occurred to me that doing so would earn me an accusation—and judgment—of promoting hate. 

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“My Way or My Way”

“Trans rights are under attack,” warns Jude Ellison Sade Doyle, author of a piece dedicated to abusing dissenting voices, when in fact the “trans” movement has made “faster progress than any movement in American history” (to quote one of its own leaders), often at the cost of others’ rights. “[T]rans women...are being killed in greater numbers every year,” Doyle wrote, referring to an article pointing out that “224 trans and gender non-conforming people were targeted on the basis of their perceived identity in 2019.” Unfortunately, the same applies to members of other groups, in 2019 8,588 of them. Eight hundred eighty-three were gay, 143 were lesbian. 

Doyle accuses writers Andrew Sullivan, Bari Weiss, Katie Herzog, and Jesse Singal, among others, of being “harassment influencers...dedicated to spreading transphobic rhetoric,” and because they publish their articles on Substack, like thousands of other writers, Substack has now “morphed into a haven for online transphobia” a “publication [with] a clear stance against trans rights.” 

Indeed, “...by allowing this set of writers to define and shape a media consensus against trans people’s humanity”—i.e., unless we deprive these writers of their right to free speech—we’re on the road to barbaric Britain, whose government Doyle notes has “decreed that trans people [lack] the right to legally self-identify,” which is how Doyle characterizes the British government’s requirement that “transgender” people acquire a medical diagnosis in order to legally change their gender. It also announced that “cost for trans people to change birth certificates will be cut from £140 [$194] and the process will be moved online.” The cost has subsequently been cut to £10 [$14] and “will fall to about £5 [$7] from the start of May.” Which isn’t good enough for LGBT charity Stonewall, whose CEO said any fee "creates a barrier for some trans people."

While the British Equalities Office has been hard at work making the rules more equal, “straightforward and dignified as possible,” for “transgender” people, it hasn’t yet gotten to the average “cis” Joe and Jane rules. To “apply to correct a birth certificate costs £75 [$104] or £90 [$125].” To legally change your name, “you must apply to the Royal Courts of Justice to get an ‘enrolled’ deed poll using the deed poll process. It costs £42.44 [$51].” And no, you cannot do it online. Just buy the ten page “deed poll package” like (almost) everybody else. 

Doyle warns that “…trans children...attempt suicide in huge numbers: Over half of trans boys, 41.8% of non-binary children, and 29.9% of trans girls, according to a study from the American Academy of Pediatrics.”

It seems to me that the writer is trying to give the impression that these numbers refer to the general U.S. population of 333 million. They do not. They refer to a study of 120,617 U.S. adolescents, which shows that “trans” identified children do not, thank God, attempt suicide in “huge”numbers. Of the study sample’s 120,617 kids, 89 “trans” identified boys, 148 “non-binary” identified children, and 60 “trans” identified girls said they had attempted suicide [2.10.22 “saying” you’ve attempted suicide is not the same as lying in the ER after having attempted suicide]. This is not to trivialize the plight of “trans” identified children, who like “trans” identified adults, unfortunately suffer psychiatric problems in greater numbers than the general population or to suggest the problem isn’t worthy of attention and resources. We are, however, not talking about a “huge” number, because the “trans” population isn’t huge. Yet. And considering the mental anguish many “trans” identified people suffer, I would have thought that a positive thing. 

What shocked me the most, perhaps because I am a woman and the mother of a female adolescent, is that according to the study, almost eleven thousand female adolescent respondents said they had attempted suicide (17.6% or 10,763). That huge number tells us that young girls in the U.S. are suffering a mental health crisis, which shouldn’t come as a surprise considering that ca “two percent of U.S. high school students now identify as transgender, an increase of ca 1,000 percent; the U.K. has seen an increase of 4,000, and three-quarters are girls.” 

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The writers Doyle wants to strip of their free speech rights for believing that reality isn’t optional refuse to cave into demands that we reject basic scientific understanding of biological sex. They refuse to accept the faddish idea that “sex is entirely in the brain.”

If we are to accept that an “inner gender identity” determines “real” human sex, we also have to accept that other attributes and self-professed identities—trans-species, trans-abled, and trans-racial—determine reality, and we don’t (Rachel Dolezal became a “global hate figure for being a ‘race faker,’” for claiming a black identity when she’s obviously not black). Why not? Shouldn’t people who identify as animals, able-bodied people who identify as disabled also receive medical treatments at taxpayer expense to transform their bodies to conform with their minds? 

How would the “medical experts” who support “trans” activists’ claims—and who have a huge financial stake in the “Sex Reassignment Surgery Market”—which is expected to to hit $1.5 bn by 2026“—treat children with body integrity identity disorder (BIID), which numerous medical studies and “patients liken to gender identity disorder:...Patients’ anatomy is at odds with...internal sense of self, causing intense discomfort.”? Would they repeatedly validate little Jenny and Jamal’s ideas that their left leg was “wrong” and should be amputated?

No scientific evidence supports the claims that “transgender” men are biological men and “transgender” women are biological women. Sex isn’t “assigned at birth” any more than we are “assigned” a height or weight at birth. “Primary sex determination in humans occurs at fertilization and is dependent upon the zygote’s two sex chromosomes. Sex differences manifest...in bodily systems and organs...to the molecular level.” It is why forensic scientists can determine sex when all that remains of a human body is a single tooth or bone. “Interventions that alter a person’s sexual appearance do not alter the person’s genetic code. Therefore, sex does not change. No amount of medical intervention can ‘transition’ any person from one sex to the other.”

“Trans” activists preach that the facts are what they feel and the truth is what they want. Their philosophy is of course best described by themselves: “There are no two sides, there is no argument; there are trans people who exist, and the bigots who think we shouldn’t. Only one of those groups is right. Only one of them has any points worth hearing.” 

The extremism of the “trans” ideology has become misanthropic. It’s not “our way or the highway.” It’s our way or our way, and it’s the way of tyrants. You cannot argue with tyrants, because the argument only has one side: their side, historically stuck to the business end of a bayonet and rammed down your throat.

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So, that was most of my post (I left out the “whiners” sentence, which was silly and of no editorial value, anyway). Perhaps the language in that last sentence was too graphic. After all, I should have been forewarned after Twitter removed my tweet, linked to historical information on the Getty Museum website, about how many of formerly devout Mussolini supporters had participated in bringing about his grisly end (I was trying to make a certain point). Don’t try this again, Twitter said, or else. 

Debating facts, historical or scientific, might offend someone’s feelings, so let’s ban the debate and the facts. At least, when we repeat our violent history, we won’t have to experience the emotional bummer that comes with realizing that we should have known better. 

And as I said, I shouldn’t have written that “trans activists are such whiners...worse than Trump.” Maybe that was the hate speech that resulted in Medium taking down my post for violating their rules. Doyle’s post, however, is still alive and well on Medium, and in case you’re considering airing your views on the site, you can use it (and mine) as a guide to Medium’s rule of decorum: Stay away from scientific facts, don’t call trans activists whiners or compare them (or anyone) to Trump. 

You are allowed to safely libel (specific) people by calling them “transphobic, hate-mongers, bigots, extremist, harassment influencers dedicated to spreading transphobic rhetoric” and call their work “hate speech...untrue, misleading, dangerous, inflammatory hatred..transphobic rhetoric.” Also, feel free to accuse a business—or at least Substack—of providing “platforms and a payment mechanism to bigots...publishing inflammatory content” and “hate speech [that] is untrue, misleading, and dangerous.”

If you’re not satisfied that this will suffice “to promote violence and hatred” against the people you hate, as well as those who agree with their works, you can suggest they be deprived of their free speech rights: “by allowing this set of writers to define and shape a media consensus...” Well, we can’t allow that. Heck, just take it a step further, because “there are no two sides, there is no argument; there are trans people, who exist, and the bigots, who think we shouldn’t. Only one of those groups is right. Only one of them has any points worth hearing.” (“Bold” emphasis mine).

Vow. Medium apparently thinks this rhetoric is all part of “thoughtful and civil discussion.” I can think of a few unpleasant historical figures who’d have loved it, but in keeping with my own advice to stay away from historical facts, I won’t name them or describe the fate that awaited people they believed had no “points worth hearing.” 

—”If we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. It may easily turn out that the intolerant are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but,,, denounce all argument...and answer by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder...as criminal.”

—Karl Popper, 1945 The Open Society and Its Enemies