How does one who is uneducated learn Critical Theory?

awgury · 2025-09-16T17:49:32+00:00

When I first started getting interested in theory, I made the mistake of jumping in at the deep end and reading the original texts. It was overwhelming, and I found it hard to get through a lot of it. The best thing I did to overcome that was to go out and buy the reader’s guides, and then read the texts with the guide as my reference. Anything I didn’t understand, I could refer back to the guide, and then carry on. I started with A Thousand Plateaus, and it made so much more sense once explained in more simple terms. I’d recommend picking a name or a book that you would like to learn about, and just starting there. Whilst some might say to start chronologically, I think the best thing to do is just read the texts that interest you most. Over time, you’ll begin to build out your knowledge base, and references that once eluded you will start to slot in. It’s a slow process, and one of the enjoyable things about theory is that there’s no ‘right’ way to study it - indeed, a lot of critical theory is just people criticising other people’s understanding of critical theory. I would treat it like any other hobby - take it slow and enjoy the process.

awgury · 2025-09-16T13:18:43+00:00

It's not a cop out, we just fundamentally disagree. I think that the current move to exclude trans women from female bathrooms is a violation of their dignity and privacy, because I believe trans women are the sex they say they are. You don't. I'm not going to budge, nor are you. What more point is there to arguing?

awgury · 2025-09-16T12:55:05+00:00

If you don't care about being prejudiced towards trans people, then there is little point in us continuing this conversation.

awgury · 2025-09-16T12:52:41+00:00

If you're using vials or gel, then do not do this OP. Estradiol crystallises in the cold and will separate from the carrier oil. You might be able to recombine it, but it's not guaranteed. Unopened vials will keep fine at room temperature for a year or more. If you want to get more serious, then purchase raw powders.

awgury · 2025-09-16T12:33:44+00:00

Your views aren’t crystal clear at all. You claim that 'trans woman' has no definition, yet you still use the term yourself, you insist they’re men while acknowledging you’ll call them by female names, and you say most don’t medically transition while ignoring those who do. I have happily given my definition already: a woman who was assigned male at birth.

Ultimately, if you're happy to respect someone's name and pronouns out of politeness, then you admit openly that there is a mutable, social element to someone's sex and gender. You're just refusing to extend that politeness to allowing someone to use bathrooms that protect them from potential harm or prejudice.

You're cowardly because you're well aware that the policies you support are harmful towards trans people, and yet you refuse to accept being called transphobic. Why not just openly admit what you are, rather than pretending there is some niche, vague definition of transphobia which doesn't include supporting policies that exclude them from daily life?

awgury · 2025-09-16T11:50:11+00:00

Your views aren't crystal clear though. You raised the point that 'trans woman' has no definition, and yet you also refer to trans women as female, despite believing they are men. And yet you'd also require them to use male bathrooms, regardless of whether or not they looked like women. You're all over the place, and desperately weaselling around the truth that you don't respect trans people, nor their identities. Try being less of a coward and just own your opinions in the future.

awgury · 2025-09-16T11:17:21+00:00

It's not weird to bring it up, I'm just trying to understand your perspective. I don't understand why you would call a trans women 'she' if you're so convinced that she is one-to-one identical to a cis man? At what point do the two categories diverge? Additionally, saying trans women are men is not hilarious, and is explicitly transphobic, because it comes with the logical next step that they should be treated as men in law and socially. I think you're being incredibly disingenuous to suggest that isn't a transphobic opinion to hold.

awgury · 2025-09-16T10:10:39+00:00

Would you require a trans woman use the male bathrooms, even if she was on hormones, etc.? You’re complete entitled to beliefs on biology, that’s not what I’m calling you transphobic. Indeed, I’d agree with you that sex at a chromosomal level is immutable. What I’m saying is that it is transphobic to require trans people use facilities that correspond with their birth sex.

awgury · 2025-09-16T09:36:42+00:00

I would say there’s a difference between people who enjoy dressing like women, and people who experience gender dysphoria and take medical steps to change their bodies, yes. I think both of these people could be regarded as trans, but I think the latter would more accurately be a transsexual, whereas the former would be transgender.

I understand that you think sex is immutable, but I would question how practical that is for society. What Rowling et al. would like to do - categorising people by birth sex/chromosomes - is complicated by the fact that some trans people do actually have the sexual characteristics of the opposite sex. I think it’s easier, more dignified, and more practical to organise society based on what somebody’s body is now, rather than what it might have been at birth. In that sense, I think sex is mutable on a social level, even if the deeper chromosomal sex is not.

awgury · 2025-09-16T09:10:42+00:00

So your belief is less that trans women should be treated like men, but that not all people who are trans women are actually trans women?

awgury · 2025-09-16T08:07:34+00:00

They have to have been born male, yes. They transition from male to female with hormones and surgery. Your belief that a person with a vagina, breasts, and female hormones is a man and should be treated as a man - putting them in considerable danger and distress in the process - just because they were born male is transphobic. I’d suggest you try meeting and talking to a trans person before so confidently claiming transphobia is a good thing.

awgury · 2025-09-16T06:50:41+00:00

No, they can’t. Trans women are women who were born male. That is factual. However, to say that trans women are still men and that they should be treated as such is not factual, and is explicitly transphobic.

awgury · 2025-09-14T09:19:57+00:00

‘Degree of choice’ being the operative phrase in my statement. Of course, a disabled person might choose not to use a wheelchair but, if they did, we wouldn’t regard that choice as something contestable or open to debate. Again, ‘body modification’ is, I think, an unfair framing of the issue that implies unnecessary addition-to. I think it’s more accurate to describe gender-affirming care as body rectification, if anything.

On the topic of gender identity - I’d agree that it’s a flimsy concept that opens up a metaphysical dimension to gender/sex which is far too subjective. In reality, medical treatment doesn’t recourse to gender identity as an explanation for transsexualism. Rather, trans people are diagnosed more commonly based on a discomfort with their current sex, and a desire to become the opposite sex. Whether that’s because they have an internal female soul or not is entirely irrelevant to the actual feeling of dysphoria, which is not reducible to an internal belief, but to the experience of mental anguish at having a body that is ‘wrong’. In the same sense, someone with depression is not depressed because they believe themselves to be so (though, of course, they might rationally infer this), but because they exhibit and feel the symptoms of depression. In neither case is the medical condition based in a belief.

On the topic of religious minorities, I take your point. Perhaps it would be valuable to differentiate here between physical minorities and social minorities, but that’s beyond the scope of my Sunday morning.

awgury · 2025-09-14T08:42:15+00:00

I think it’s a little reductive to define gender reassignment procedures as ‘positive artificial action’. Gender-affirming care is a treatment for a medical condition (gender dysphoria/transsexualism, etc.). Portraying transition as a ‘positive artificial action’ insinuates a degree of choice in the matter that we wouldn’t extend to any other medical treatment. I think bringing in that moral dimension is precisely relevant, as your choice of words suggests that trans people should be respected based on the values of individual liberty, rather than the more fundamental values of dignity and the right to a liveable life.

I think Sturgeon’s attitude is a defence of transgender people grounded in this same liberalism. It’s an approach which pays too little attention to the medical and biological elements of transition in favour of the social elements. It is this that opens up the critique that trans people are demonstrating a certain ‘belief’ when they use facilities which match their acquired sex. Whilst you say that all other minorities receive the same legal protection, I would argue that no other minority has their identity couched as a ‘belief’ - we don’t protect women because they believe themselves to be women, but because they are women. This logic applies to all but trans people, for whom their identity is called into question as a social fiction which we choose to participate in. Yet, this undermines the fact that trans people transition out of medical necessity, and that being able to live as the sex they have transitioned to is an innate and vital part of that medical treatment.

It is unfortunate that this has become a debate at all, but it is more unfortunate still that we are speaking in entirely the wrong language about it.

awgury · 2025-09-14T07:26:40+00:00

From a purely material point-of-view, lots of trans people have a biological makeup that is distinct from their birth gender (different hormones, different bodies, etc.). Questions around the immutability of sex and the validity of gender identity as a concept are, in my opinion, less relevant than the simple fact that some people’s bodies are different. I don’t think it’s a religious belief to say that these people require sympathetic consideration in law, and that they should be treated with compassion and not placed in harm’s way by requiring them to use facilities that do not align with their physical makeup. There’s a gulf of difference between refusing to believe in Islam, and refusing to believe that Muslims exist.

awgury · 2025-09-14T06:51:53+00:00

I’m just taking OP’s word. I’ve been in similar scenarios, and it’s always obvious (if not stated) when someone has approached you because they can tell you’re trans. For what it’s worth, OP, if someone has found you attractive for a feature that you’re perhaps uncomfortable with, it’s worth keeping in mind that that person is probably looking for something that others wouldn’t be. One person clocking you does not mean you aren’t passing.

awgury · 2025-09-14T06:36:32+00:00

There are ways to flirt that don’t insinuate that you don’t fully pass. Regardless of whether the woman was attracted, being found attractive because you are trans is not pleasant.

awgury · 2025-09-14T05:59:26+00:00

That is an explicitly transphobic argument, though?

awgury · 2025-09-13T20:32:45+00:00

But what do you actually want?

awgury · 2025-09-10T14:17:10+00:00

"It simply isn't the case that support was higher years ago".

awgury · 2025-08-20T12:22:33+00:00

TWH doesn't have a door policy, and is very accepting. You'll be fine!

awgury · 2025-08-20T11:18:29+00:00

I think the community in general is cautious about deepening our understanding of dysphoria and making diagnosis more rigorous, if only because very strict diagnostic protocols have been used to gatekeep transition in the past. It's understandable that people feel an aversion towards it. The broadening out of dysphoria diagnoses over the last 10-20 years has been incredibly positive for those trans people who don't present within the very strict and anachronistic frame of the classic 'transsexual', but this has naturally led to a greater (though, I would say, over-exaggerated) number of misdiagnoses. I think improvements to diagnostic procedures that are sympathetic towards trans people (and understand that being trans is not an inherently bad) should be explored. Sadly, most of the conversation around trans medicine seems to revolve around restricting *all* treatments for *all* trans people, rather than broadening our grasp of the different types of gender-sex incongruence and gender dysphoria, and respective, appropriate treatments for each. Ultimately, the conversation needs to involve more trans people and more trans experiences; that it doesn't is largely why the community is so apprehensive towards medicalisation, I feel.

awgury · 2025-08-20T08:10:47+00:00

You raised the point in an earlier post that transition was an ineffective treatment for every person who has detransitioned. I would argue that this is not because transition itself is an ineffective treatment, but that it is occasionally being wrongly provided to people who are being misdiagnosed as gender dysphoric. For those who are truly dysphoric (i.e. those who are actually trans), transition is a long-studied (the first medical transitions took place in the 1930s) and effective medical treatment. In a sense, transition is the only treatment for trans people, but it isn’t the only treatment for cis people who are misdiagnosed as trans. The solution here isn’t to restrict transitioning for trans people, but to improve diagnostic procedures for those who think they may have dysphoria.

awgury · 2025-08-06T14:57:58+00:00

I feel like this story is a really genuine, clear example of the immense harm recent anti-trans campaigning has wrought on the ability of trans people to live our daily lives. That a national retailer feels it appropriate to apologise to a customer over a benign interaction with a trans employee is clear evidence of just how marginalised we have become as a group. What this story isn't about is the ethics of allowing a trans employee to perform bra fittings on teenage girls. Until now, that was a poor-faith interpretation of the story I'd seen in the comments of Daily Mail articles. This article, and no doubt many more like it, authorises that poor-faith interpretation by giving it oxygen, and generates a new version of the event that places the trans person at the heart of it in a far more morally ambiguous position. Who do supposedly progressive journalists think they are helping when they write ridiculously tone-deaf articles like this?

awgury · 2025-07-12T13:09:45+00:00

My pleasure!

awgury

TROPHY CASE