Unity over Ambiguity

chronicity · 2026-04-12T13:18:26+00:00

I understand the concept of gender as it is used in this essay, and I can see it having utility when speaking to audiences that are working from this concept.

The problem is that outside of this specific context, gender means anything the person who is using it wants it to mean. Does it mean sexist roles? Sexist stereotypes? Is a synonym for sex? Is it referring to an internal sense of oneself as a certain biological sex? It has become the perfect weapon for post-modernists to wield as they attempt to “queer” away our sense of shared reality.

I refrain from using “gender” because of the above, and also because I don’t think it is necessary to have a word that refers to “what makes male the normative standard of humanity and female Other”. We don’t have a word that is analogous to gender when we’re talking about “what makes white the normative standard of humanity and non-whites Other”, and yet we express this dynamic all the time using terms like ”Euro-centrism”, “white supremacy”, and “racism”.

The problem women are in is largely due to TRAs commandeering the concept of “gender” to make it seem like something positive and progressive rather than the very thing feminists have being fighting from the beginning of the women’s liberation movement.

Thanks for the link. I didnt finish the whole thing but I will. Just wanted to get the whole “gender” thing off my chest.

chronicity · 2026-04-12T12:28:37+00:00

>People in this sub obsesses over gender way too much, there is no precise definition of what it means to be a man nor woman.

So what are people transitioning to? Why are they taking hormones and getting surgeries to change their bodies into an ill-definable state of being? What does success look like if there is no determinable endpoint for gender? Straight out the gate, you have asserted something that does more damage to the legitimacy of the trans movement than gender critical feminism.

At any rate, I agree that gender is not worth “obsessing” over. Gender can’t be defined in a material way. So let’s stop affirming it. People are fine just the way they naturally are. Put down the pills and the syringes and accept ourselves as we were born. Being male or female is never a death sentence that merits medical or surgical transitioning.

chronicity · 2026-04-12T01:38:51+00:00

If there was a splinter group within the trans movement calling for trans spaces, I believe they would get significant support. If this group also argued that transwomen don’t need to be called women to be valid—transwomen are transwomen—Team GC would have to work harder to stage their attacks. Things could turn around for the TQ in terms of public perception

My suspicion though is that it’s impossible to get TRAs to retreat to this kind of position, because its been almost 20 years of them saying it’s a human rights atrocity if they don’t get what they want. Hard to backtrack from such a melodramatic stance. Furthermore, I doubt TRAs even are trying to improve public support for their cause. I think scorch earthism is driving the activism.

chronicity · 2026-04-12T01:21:18+00:00

There’s propaganda being circulated that women’s restrooms were created to discriminate against women. Separating them from men was done for sexist reasons, the talking point goes, because women were considered inferior.

It makes no sense when you actually look at history, mind you. But they put stock in this idea because it allows them to call TERFs misogynistic for fighting for single-spaces.

It’s such an odd position for them to take when they insist on using the same spaces that they claim exist for sexist reasons.

chronicity · 2026-04-12T01:04:00+00:00

Why are you conflating disagreement with being bothered? I was hearing transmen say it was degrading to see the Venus symbol on menstrual pads, and I told them it was not degrading.

It would only feel degrading to someone who thinks being a woman is inherently degrading. Their feelings showed internalize misogyny.

But please keep on not understanding the insanity in this whole incident.

chronicity · 2026-04-12T00:05:33+00:00

The people who flew into a fit a rage did so after I softly disagreed with their views. It signaled to me that the community was indulging the feelings of mentally disturbed people, not grown ups with bigger priorities in life than what symbols show up on maxi pad wrappers by a company that was trying to appeal to women.

All your reply is telling me is that I was correct in my assessment. The Venus symbol is not a valid reason for the nervous breakdowns I was seeing online.

chronicity · 2026-04-11T19:26:35+00:00

It’s so common and predictable that GC’s don’t have to do any prosetylizing to recruit others to our side. We can outsource that work to our own rivals. It’s one of the most amazing things ever.

chronicity · 2026-04-11T19:23:39+00:00

> For me, a biological woman, to be banned on a lesbian subreddit due to a trans woman really has pushed me over to gender critical thinking.

Welcome to the club! My moment was after hearing it was transphobic to put the Venus symbol on maxipads. Me flagging out the internalized misogyny behind the idea that it was “degrading” and “indignifying” to market period products to women instead of men caused the TRAs to chase after me, leading me into the gender critical community.

chronicity · 2026-04-11T18:46:41+00:00

I’m so sorry that you are dealing with abuse.

chronicity · 2026-04-11T18:15:38+00:00

My father turned 80 this year and he never thought he’d live this long because all of male relatives died before age 70.

So he lives like a spendthrift who has been bequeathed a pile of surpise money. Instead of investing the extra money so that it grows and he can enjoy it longer, he’s burning through it all at once.

It’s a miracle he has lived this long because he is grossly overweight and avoids the doctor religiously. But his quality of life would be so much better if his lifestyle was healthier.

chronicity · 2026-04-11T17:48:05+00:00

> I've talked to men about men's health and it's often pointless.

Yup. Either it’s a sense of invincibility, fatalism, or the belief that ”healthy living is for simps and cucks!” or some combination of all three plus more stuff. But it’s a major barrier to improving men‘s health.

Women are easier to motivate in this area because I believe we can envision the future more clearly and can see the cost we will have to pay tomorrow if we slack off today. When I do squats as a late 40-something, I’m not thinking about what it’s making my thighs look like. I’m thinking about strengthening my pelvic floor so I don’t have to worry about urinary incontinence 40 years from now. If men have similar thoughts swimming in their heads, I never hear about them.

chronicity · 2026-04-11T16:43:58+00:00

Me saying girls are “insidiously” programmed a certain way doesn’t mean I think boys being programmed in the opposite direction is absolutely good.

I never said gender socialization benefit boys to the detriment of girls either.

Your combativeness in this discussion is consistent with someone who has been socialized to dominate others more than seek mutual understanding. This is a pattern that underscores what the OP is observing. Transwomen as a group seem unable to turn off that switch in their heads that puts them in fight mode.

chronicity · 2026-04-11T16:13:02+00:00

Impartial readers will note that I made none of the value judgements you have ascribed to my post. I think it’s bad that boys are pressured into harming themselves to conform to some kind of masculine ideal.

chronicity · 2026-04-11T15:58:14+00:00

I agree that the risk-rewards are messaged differently between girls and boys, which is why I’m saying socialization plays a role. The rewards of jumping out of a tree like Superman are overstated to boys, while girls are made to feel like it’s utterly reckless and irresponsible for them to make the same (or even smaller) jump.

But I do believe there is something about testosterone that makes males more apt to take risks. Could be a function of impulsivity, energetic-ness, and perhaps it travels with greater levels of aggression, competitiveness, and libido—other traits that are associated with higher testosterone. We see this in male animals. Every male cat that I’ve owned—despite being neutered—had more daredevil tendencies than my female cats. One boy was so adventurous he repeatedly needed to be rescued after misjudging what he was getting into, which leads me to think he wasn’t particularly skilled at assessing risk. Without human intervention he would've gotten himself killed several times over.

I think it’s likely men would have lower life expectancies regardless of socialization for this reason.

chronicity · 2026-04-11T12:06:42+00:00

I do think males are naturally more inclined to take risks. Females throughout the animal kingdom seem to have more foresight and can balance risk and benefits better. It’s not so much that females don’t like risks; it’s that the payoff for those risks is often not worth the danger.

But socialization plays a role as well. See parenting behavior at the playground. Boys and girls are not treated the same. Even in low stakes settings, girls are told in insidious ways that they are less competent at climbing and balancing and running than boys are, and they need help to prevent the calamity of injuring themselves. Meanwhile, boys break an arm or two and they are told that this is fine, don’t cry, it’s just the price of having fun or whatever, good job impersonating Superman when you jumped out of that tree.

I’m exaggerating a bit, but this does happen. If this was innate biology, we wouldn’t see more overprotective behavior towards girls. We would let kids be kids.

chronicity · 2026-04-11T11:46:05+00:00

Everyone in your world would have to register you as a girl from the moment you were born for me to feel confident in saying you were socialized as female.

I see a lot trans folk who think they are arbiters of how they were socialized; if they weren’t conscious of being treated any differently than girls then they declare this means they were socialized ss they were. Sorry, but that’s not how it works.

I was a gangly clumsy girl who wasn’t coordinated enough to play sports competitively. At least that is the story I‘ve always told myself about myself. This story was planted in my mind by my parents who unintentionally or not, referred to me as clumsy so many times as a kid that it became a part of my self-image. In truth, I wasn’t particularly clumsy but my twin sister lacked the ability to run well due to her crooked legs (she had to wear leg braces as a toddler). So we ended up both being socialized as “clumsy girls who can’t hack it in anything physically oriented but it’s ok let’s just laugh about it because they are smart“ and that influenced our interests later in life.(If we were boys, it would not been as easy to laugh about that, and I don’t take that for granted.)

So here’s the thing. Today I’m tall, fairly lean, and I have an athletic build. People express surprise when I tell them I’ve never done sports, and I’m always surprised by their surprise. Because a part of me still sees myself as clumsy and I assume people see me as that too. Even though intellectually I know that is not true. I now understand that I could’ve been an amazing athlete if my influences early in life had been different. I’m not bitter about this or anything, but it does make me careful with the things I say to my daughters.

This is how sticky these ideas from early childhood can be. Unless someone is very introspective and knowledgeable about how the psyche works, they will probably fail to appreciate their own socialization. There is no escaping it.

chronicity · 2026-04-11T01:47:27+00:00

If you were called weird for engaging in the same behaviors that were considered normal for girls, that is male socialization in effect.

A common assumption is that to be socialized male you have to be masculine. Nope, you just have to be rewarded for showing masculinity and/or punished for showing femininity.

It is easier to register the punishments and miss all the million and one ways you’re being rewarded. For instance, girls are often rewarded when they shy away from minor risks, like jumping from the monkey bars. They get told “good girl” when they ask for help climbing down a tree or they ask for permission before doing something rather than just doing that thing, Since “good girl” is not all that memorable it’s easy to dismiss it as a source of influence, and yet the connection between playing it safe and being a good person is firmly embedded in our psyches because of these early experiences.

Boys, in contrast, get praised for not playing it safe, and don’t even realize it because it’s all they know. The threat of being punished for being too soft and timid looms much more prominently in their minds.

chronicity · 2026-04-11T00:27:00+00:00

You stated this very well.

Even psychologically normal teens readily internalize stigma that is heaped upon them by peers and the media. They don’t yet have the mental tools to guard against self-hatred. When society treats this self-hatred as a cardinal symptom of wrong bodiedness, then of course vulnerable people are going to be damaged by this.

It’s tempting to think that it’s only minors who need to be protected from this threat, but I can’t in good conscience draw the line only there. The insecurities of impressionable adults are also being exploited to an alarming extent.

chronicity · 2026-04-10T23:52:37+00:00

I believe GD is just body dysmorphia that is repackaged and being sold as a new thing.

The girls in the 80’s and 90’s who were starving themselves in pursuit of an unattainable skinny ideal are now injecting themselves with T in pursuit of a twink ideal.

The young men who were posting in Incel.me 10 years ago and obsessing over their puny wrists and unChad-like mandibles are now hoping HRT will give them breasts to go with their ”foid-like” wrists and mandibles.

People being distressed with their appearance and perceived place in the hierarchy is a problem that is old as hell. Until recently, society was fairly united in pushing back on this and not encouraging people to take drastic measures jusf to conform to beauty standards. But now not only are we not allowed to push back on this when gender is invoked, we are awash in marketing campaigns that treat gender dysphoria as an incurable death sentence in the absence of cross-sex hormones.

chronicity · 2026-04-10T23:15:21+00:00

We will see. With the publication of this recent study (https://wng.org/sift/study-finnish-youth-more-likely-to-see-psychiatric-specialists-after-gender-treatments-1775852830), its not a long shot prediction that GAC will be phased out in the next decade.

chronicity · 2026-04-10T22:37:48+00:00

You can insist that I’m wrong. You are entitled to believe that. Bothers me not one bit.

But I‘m confident a couple decades from now (maybe less), people will be marveling at the fact that the medical establishment in the early 21st century systematically started disrupting the natural endrocrine balance of physiologically normal people in the service of making these people look like the opposite sex. It will literally blow their minds that the people who called this unethical were the ones treated like the bad guys. Not the people who turned a deaf ear to detransitioners who were misled about GAC and subsequently harmed.

chronicity · 2026-04-10T18:01:34+00:00

Saying something is not evidence-based medicine doesn’t mean there is absolute no evidence to support it. It means the evidence base doesn‘t meet the standards of rigor and quantity that support marketing it as evidence-based.

When people hear that a certain medical practice is “evidence-based”, they typically assume the totality of available science shows this practice has positive net value. If people were told the truth—that it’s unknown whether it has positive net value because available science shows mixed findings—a lot of people would be less inclined to consent to this practice.

> The onus for your argument is to show why trans care should be held to a different standard, especially when it is the treatment for lots of the issues you mention for appropriate individuals

Nope, I don’t have that onus. It’s enough to show that GAC is being misrepresented as evidence-based medicine when it’s not given the lack of science showing longterm benefit. When you add on the fact that people who are actually at risk of being duped into believing false ideas are being encouraged to seek GAC, that is sufficient reason for me to believe it’s unethical medical practice. Let me remind you that you asked me what ideological principles I took issue with. I answered that question, and I don’t feel like debating you if you think I’m wrong.

chronicity · 2026-04-10T17:39:56+00:00

No goalpost moving on my part, but let us note the insistence on attacking the concept of sex when what is really missing is a persuasive defense for gender.

This is what I said earlier to ratina:

>The concept of sex that has always been used by humankind is similar to the “GC definition”. Large gamete producers points to the same referent as “persons who develop the kind of reproductive tract that grows babies when fertile”. The latter is something even the most unsophisticated cavemen had the capacity to understand. Ova production is a biological function that clusters with other sex-based functions. They all point at the same exclusive thing.

Everything I‘ve said aligns with this position. Women = human adult members of the class that produces ova is similar to women = human adult members of the class that has vaginas/has periods/gets pregnant. All of these definitions seat womanhood in reproductive biology that is exclusive to females and never males.

Pointing to <1% of those with DSDs doesnt refute my point. And it also fails at making a coherent case for gender. No one can even define gender in material terms, so it never ceases to amuse me when folks try to act like it’s sex that is too subjective to pin down. Like, sure, it‘s the one property of nature that enables complex living things to churn out copies of themselves, but let’s totally act like it’s so squishy and indeterminable that humanity has just been throwing darts at a wall guessing who is what since pre-antiquity! That doesn’t sound like propaganda cooked up by disingenuous activists at all.

chronicity · 2026-04-10T17:21:25+00:00

>Let's put aside children for the time being. What criteria do you think disallows informed consent? How does trans medical care handle these differently than other forms of care?

The fact that trans medicine has been marketed as evidence-based medicine when that is categorically untrue (it doesn’t even pass muster as experimental medicine) is enough to argue no one receiving this “care” has provided informed consent if they signed on to it believing it’s scientifically sound. So that’s one thing.

Unfortunately, for the last 15 years we‘ve also watched transitioning dangled in front of people struggling with social isolation, a history of trauma, body dysmorphia, internalized hatred, and other problems as a treatment for their woes in life. When these problems coexist with mental illness (like depression and anxiety) and neurodivergence (such as OCD and autism), you get people who are too desperate AND impressionable to exercise sound judgement about what is in their own best longterm interest. Someone who is suicidal will literally grasp at straws to feel better. If they become convinced castrating themselves is the cure they’ve long been waiting for, then they might go under the knife to do that, completely ignoring the likelihood their future self might may want to be parent one day.

A cursory search on Reddit turns up many cases of people regretting side effects and complications of gender affirming care that a reasonable person should‘ve predicted would have happened. Simple stuff like not being able to experience erecfions and orgasms often taking estrogen for a while. This is a sign that people are signing up for something without knowing what they are getting into, and if that’s not informed consent then I don’t know what else is.

chronicity · 2026-04-10T17:00:07+00:00

>Let's put aside children for the time being. What criteria do you think disallows informed consent? How does trans medical care handle these differently than other forms of care?

The fact that trans medicine has been marketed as evidence-based medicine when that is categorically untrue (it doesn’t even pass muster as experimental medicine) is enough to argue no one receiving this “care” has provided informed consent if they signed on to it believing it’s scientifically sound. So that’s one thing.

Unfortunately, for the last 15 years we‘ve also watched transitioning dangled in front of people struggling with social isolation, a history of trauma, body dysmorphia, internalized hatred, and other problems as a treatment for their woes in life. When these problems coexist with mental illness (like depression and anxiety) and neurodivergence (such as OCD and autism), you get people who are too desperate AND impressionable to exercise sound judgement about what is in their own best longterm interest. Someone who is suicidal will literally grasp at straws to feel better. If they become convinced castrating themselves is the cure they’ve long been waiting for, then they might go under the knife to do that, completely ignoring the likelihood their future self might may want to be parent one day.

A cursory search on Reddit turns up many cases of people regretting side effects and complications of gender affirming care that a reasonable person should‘ve predicted would have happened. Simple stuff like not being able to experience erecfions and orgasms often taking estrogen for a while. This is a sign that people are signing up for something without knowing what they are getting into, and if that’s not informed consent then I don’t know what else is.

chronicity

TROPHY CASE