I am so late to this post but I am destabilized and reeling right along with you Elizabeth. Looking forward to delving into more content from you Glenn and John, thank you for linking these issues.
I'm a transwoman, longtime reader of Loury and a big fan. This is my first comment on any Glenn Loury issue and I've been working up the courage to write something, so it's belated, sorry. There are many trans who agree with these concerns. In our current state of knowledge, it is probably not the best idea to dose children with hormones and definitely not a good idea to perform gender changing surgeries.
Having said that, I do feel a lot of the comments here are made, at best, from ignorance. There is some interesting research (not all of it on transgender people), that point to a biological basis for gender identity. Having lived through a miserable childhood and young adulthood hearing the 'there are only men and women' phrase, I would hope that perhaps we could retire that in the hopes of a more nuanced view. Down the road, my personal hope is that medicine will be able to identify, at an early age, children like me, who identify as a different gender and will successfully live that way as adults. As I said, until that day arrives, hormones and surgeries should not be performed on children. But consider that I have had a couple of 8-10 hour surgeries at a huge expense, not covered by anyone buy myself. I hope future transgender people will be spared this incredible risk and pain.
As for the evidence: Here's an interesting description of a paper on cloacal exstrophy, where children (3x as many boys as girls) are born with their intestines on the outside of their body Their sexual organs are often quite small or even split and the traditional medical solution was to convert the babies to female and raise them that way, providing hormones at puberty and information on their situation at the age of 18. Follow-up papers (done much too late in my view) found that the children didn't stay female, but spontaneously identified themselves as male or as something other than male (a minority remained female). The medical community has now modified the surgery to take this new information on gender identity into consideration. https://www.science.org/content/article/once-male-always-male
There are also twin studies which find that 40% of the time, identical twins will both be transgender. This might not seem like much, but it is huge. Consider that for juvenile diabetes, which obviously has a biological basis, both identical twins will have juvenile diabetes only 50% of the time.
I often have the feeling that people thing there is nothing 'real' here or going on here, and as I said, I don't blame for reacting badly to a lot of the over-reach that's going on today. But I believe there is something real here, and it would be nice if you might consider that while you are all deciding what to do with us down the road.
Since you have listed a number of online resources regarding this topic, I thought you might familiarize yourself with Walt Heyer's website: https://waltheyer.com/. Walt went completely through the transition and detransition processes.
I would say that young white girls and women are often victims of this trend largely because of social contagion. It is also possible that the mainstream white vision of femininity seems so oppressive and narrow to some girls and women that they decide to reject their own womanhood.
If we say "attacked", we are implying that young white women are being deliberately targeted and I don't think that this is the case. To be honest, I am not even sure if the available research proves that "transitioning" is particularly frequent among white girls and women compared to other groups...
This is by far one of the BEST responses to the arguments of gender ideology vs reality, and I find the personal story of Icy Storm heart touching. I’m not a trans myself but I can feel what this caring human is expressing.
"John is right that there have always been gender non-conforming people and that other cultures have found sometimes found ways to integrate these people."
So here's the central problem.
Gender is a system of sex-based stereotypes used to shape people's expectations of how men and women are supposed to behave. Meanwhile, man and woman are the adult human sex classes.
Some people confuse gender and sex class.
Some people are adamant that the gender set assigned to women should only be enacted by women, and the gender set assigned to men should only be enacted by men -- behavior, clothing, hobbies, thought patterns, etc.
The only reason we need to "integrate gender-nonconforming people" into society is because we insist on having gender in the first place, some of us because those believe gender means women and men, others of us because those believe women and men must conform to gender. But it has the same result in the end.
We wouldn't have to "integrate" GNC people if we'd scrap gender in the first place. If we said hey, if this has nothing to do with creating offspring, it should be open to anyone who can do/have it or wants to do/have it.
You find "third genders" in very patriarchal cultures with rigid gender roles. You find them nowhere else.
Thank you Elizabeth. Excellent letter and recap of the issues.
Glenn - I implore you to have Abigail Shrier as a a guest on your podcast. I wish we could avoid the divisive gender issues but it’s not going away. In the meantime, they are sterilizing gay kids in the name of tolerance and inclusivity.
Many comments here use the term dehumanizing, aptly describing the biggest problem with the spectrum of observable opinions regarding the issue of transgender. I appreciate the call to public discourse without political or social attack based on emotional narrative championing “rights”. Much of the mainstream media content, and political forces left and right I see as dehumanizing and effectively stripping rights of the individual parent and child navigating a complex time to be human. Openly bringing to public discussion the available science as well as breadth of experience of real humans struggling with gender identity will serve better than individuals outside of the struggle concluding what is “correct” in the matter.
It seems your "intact male" means has a penis. (This says nothing about a person who had a penis who is surgically altered to remove the penis and is mentally a female) I infer your definition of male or female is bipolar and your maleness or femaleness is determined by the outside or inside physical plumbing. Having specific kinds plumbing is not the only determinate of your maleness or femaleness. I'd be interested in your source of the data that shows the rapes you refer to are done by someone who identifies as as male rather than as a female. (I know, I know there is much more to the description of male or female than implied by my remarks but you pronouncements suggest to me your in a bipolar mode.) As you are likely aware, male and male rape is not unknown in male only prisons.
As for the female swim team, if you matured to age 21 as a male and them switched genders you should not compete with women. Your testosterone advantage for your first 21 years gives you an unfair advantage. And it's possible the age should be reduced to 16 or 18.
In any case, gender is on a sliding scale and society needs to talk about that sliding scale. How should we treat people who are XXY or XYY? Perhaps it doesn't affect physical development but we need to be aware and have the discussion. The world is NOT just bipolar. And those who see only a bipolar universe need to understand there are more choices than they may be aware of.
Karyotype is not sex. Chromosomal conditions affecting reproductive anatomy are wed-specific. The notion of a male person being “mentally a female” is absurd and a blatant category error.
we need to get real. there is no such thing as "gender identity" as some inalienable trait. the entire industry has its origins in immoral surgeons preying upon deranged men who had a pathological desire to change sex, whether so as to satisfy their own sexual fetishes surrounding the idea, or to escape their own homosexuality (and also satisfy their sexual urges by attracting straight men via sexual mimicry).
trans has now become a cult of extreme body modification whereby one can claim membership in a sacred societal caste for whom sex does not matter. we do this for no other category of person. the people who engage in body modification to resemble animals are not protected by animal welfare laws. Nor do they get to change their legal documents
there exists a social contract around sex and sexual boundaries, in the same way there exists a social contract around age and age boundaries. we consider crimes against children and elder abuse to be particularly heinous since those groups are vulnerable. opening the door to men to violate the boundaries of women in situations of vulnerability, be it bathrooms, locker rooms, hospital wards, prison, or shelters is to render those boundaries meaningless. furthermore, our perception of the sex of other is an innate, subconscious reflex, which is fundamental to our species' survival and as a defense mechanism. women need to know who men are to avoid danger. children lost in crowds are taught to seek out women when seeking help. not men who have a compulsion to masquerade as women.
this is the largest scandal, societal and medical, our society has ever seen. and the damage it will have wrought is unimaginable
At age 73, I don’t think I’ve ever seen an ideological offensive with the scope, momentum, and potential for widespread severe (and perhaps irreversible) societal damage as this QT+/gender-affirming movement. In my humble opinion, this is a social & cultural tsunami of world-historical proportions.
Elizabeth: you and others like you MUST be heard and listened to. Thank you for this amazing letter and the important sources & resources it links to.
Glenn: please, PLEASE give serious consideration to the possibility that, as Elizabeth suggests, this might be even bigger than the problems of race & racism which you have so courageously and effectively confronted throughout most of your life. And thank you so much for sharing Elizabeth’s letter.
I could care less if someone transforms their body, as long as they are doing it with a rational mind and an understanding of the risks involved, but I draw the line when they attempt to coerce speech. The sexualization of children, making choices for children, leading children down a path they may later regret, drawing conclusions predicated upon false premises, bad data, bad incite, is also concerning to me. I highly doubt that any psychologist knows the sexual orientation of a five year old. I didn't start thinking about women sexually until I was almost 12., and even at that age it was more curiousity and intrigue than what one would describe as lust.
Thanks for this article and letter, important points. As a parent I feel I could have written a lot of this. I have to point out that with gender treatments, puberty blockers are recommended at the outset of puberty at the earliest, think tweens. Small children are not prescribed puberty blockers, there would be no reason to do so, even if for precocious puberty, that doesn't start in the "small children" time frame to my knowledge.
I love this letter, and am grateful my work is linked in it (thanks to Elizabeth!). My comment is really just about the title, Glenn. We already know the two sides. This is a side never acknowledged, especially not in the NYT piece this week. It's the dissenting, evidence-based left that is generally accepting of diversity in gender and sexuality but differentiates between trans people and gender identity ideology. This is the hidden side, the silenced side, the other other side. I spent most of my time trying to create work that liberals can pass onto other liberals. I have tried relentlessly to get these pieces into the mainstream media, for which I worked as a freelancer for almost 20 years. But I have been mostly (not completely!) unsuccessful. This is the most nuanced side, the one it's most necessary to hear from because it seeks to understand the issue from multiple points of view. Thanks for letting Elizabeth share hers here.
Yes! "This is the hidden side, the silenced side, the OTHER other side." So grateful to you Glenn for sharing my perspective that, as Lisa says, is so rarely heard. Especially since you are new to understanding these issues and still considering your position, it was a risk. There is a pretty steep learning curve, but thanks to independent journalists like Lisa and Matt Taibi (he has a bombshell piece out just today) I hope that the tide is turning. Another incredible writer I don't think I linked to is Eliza Mondegreen. Every post of Eliza's is a gem. https://elizamondegreen.substack.com/
I just want to chime in to say that I am a subscriber to both Lisa Selin Davis's and Eliza Mondgreen's substacks and am consistently impressed by the depth of their knowledge and insight.
Fantastic piece-- I agree with every word. Liberal Democrat who has been a CASA in my 60's.
I am so late to this post but I am destabilized and reeling right along with you Elizabeth. Looking forward to delving into more content from you Glenn and John, thank you for linking these issues.
I'm a transwoman, longtime reader of Loury and a big fan. This is my first comment on any Glenn Loury issue and I've been working up the courage to write something, so it's belated, sorry. There are many trans who agree with these concerns. In our current state of knowledge, it is probably not the best idea to dose children with hormones and definitely not a good idea to perform gender changing surgeries.
Having said that, I do feel a lot of the comments here are made, at best, from ignorance. There is some interesting research (not all of it on transgender people), that point to a biological basis for gender identity. Having lived through a miserable childhood and young adulthood hearing the 'there are only men and women' phrase, I would hope that perhaps we could retire that in the hopes of a more nuanced view. Down the road, my personal hope is that medicine will be able to identify, at an early age, children like me, who identify as a different gender and will successfully live that way as adults. As I said, until that day arrives, hormones and surgeries should not be performed on children. But consider that I have had a couple of 8-10 hour surgeries at a huge expense, not covered by anyone buy myself. I hope future transgender people will be spared this incredible risk and pain.
As for the evidence: Here's an interesting description of a paper on cloacal exstrophy, where children (3x as many boys as girls) are born with their intestines on the outside of their body Their sexual organs are often quite small or even split and the traditional medical solution was to convert the babies to female and raise them that way, providing hormones at puberty and information on their situation at the age of 18. Follow-up papers (done much too late in my view) found that the children didn't stay female, but spontaneously identified themselves as male or as something other than male (a minority remained female). The medical community has now modified the surgery to take this new information on gender identity into consideration. https://www.science.org/content/article/once-male-always-male
There are also twin studies which find that 40% of the time, identical twins will both be transgender. This might not seem like much, but it is huge. Consider that for juvenile diabetes, which obviously has a biological basis, both identical twins will have juvenile diabetes only 50% of the time.
I often have the feeling that people thing there is nothing 'real' here or going on here, and as I said, I don't blame for reacting badly to a lot of the over-reach that's going on today. But I believe there is something real here, and it would be nice if you might consider that while you are all deciding what to do with us down the road.
Thanks for reading.
Since you have listed a number of online resources regarding this topic, I thought you might familiarize yourself with Walt Heyer's website: https://waltheyer.com/. Walt went completely through the transition and detransition processes.
Additionally, here is a recent Tablet article about the Pritzker Family playing God: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/billionaire-family-pushing-synthetic-sex-identities-ssi-pritzkers.
I would say that young white girls and women are often victims of this trend largely because of social contagion. It is also possible that the mainstream white vision of femininity seems so oppressive and narrow to some girls and women that they decide to reject their own womanhood.
If we say "attacked", we are implying that young white women are being deliberately targeted and I don't think that this is the case. To be honest, I am not even sure if the available research proves that "transitioning" is particularly frequent among white girls and women compared to other groups...
Thank you for sharing? This is important information.
This is by far one of the BEST responses to the arguments of gender ideology vs reality, and I find the personal story of Icy Storm heart touching. I’m not a trans myself but I can feel what this caring human is expressing.
Bravo 🙌
"John is right that there have always been gender non-conforming people and that other cultures have found sometimes found ways to integrate these people."
So here's the central problem.
Gender is a system of sex-based stereotypes used to shape people's expectations of how men and women are supposed to behave. Meanwhile, man and woman are the adult human sex classes.
Some people confuse gender and sex class.
Some people are adamant that the gender set assigned to women should only be enacted by women, and the gender set assigned to men should only be enacted by men -- behavior, clothing, hobbies, thought patterns, etc.
The only reason we need to "integrate gender-nonconforming people" into society is because we insist on having gender in the first place, some of us because those believe gender means women and men, others of us because those believe women and men must conform to gender. But it has the same result in the end.
We wouldn't have to "integrate" GNC people if we'd scrap gender in the first place. If we said hey, if this has nothing to do with creating offspring, it should be open to anyone who can do/have it or wants to do/have it.
You find "third genders" in very patriarchal cultures with rigid gender roles. You find them nowhere else.
Thank you Elizabeth. Excellent letter and recap of the issues.
Glenn - I implore you to have Abigail Shrier as a a guest on your podcast. I wish we could avoid the divisive gender issues but it’s not going away. In the meantime, they are sterilizing gay kids in the name of tolerance and inclusivity.
Many comments here use the term dehumanizing, aptly describing the biggest problem with the spectrum of observable opinions regarding the issue of transgender. I appreciate the call to public discourse without political or social attack based on emotional narrative championing “rights”. Much of the mainstream media content, and political forces left and right I see as dehumanizing and effectively stripping rights of the individual parent and child navigating a complex time to be human. Openly bringing to public discussion the available science as well as breadth of experience of real humans struggling with gender identity will serve better than individuals outside of the struggle concluding what is “correct” in the matter.
It seems your "intact male" means has a penis. (This says nothing about a person who had a penis who is surgically altered to remove the penis and is mentally a female) I infer your definition of male or female is bipolar and your maleness or femaleness is determined by the outside or inside physical plumbing. Having specific kinds plumbing is not the only determinate of your maleness or femaleness. I'd be interested in your source of the data that shows the rapes you refer to are done by someone who identifies as as male rather than as a female. (I know, I know there is much more to the description of male or female than implied by my remarks but you pronouncements suggest to me your in a bipolar mode.) As you are likely aware, male and male rape is not unknown in male only prisons.
As for the female swim team, if you matured to age 21 as a male and them switched genders you should not compete with women. Your testosterone advantage for your first 21 years gives you an unfair advantage. And it's possible the age should be reduced to 16 or 18.
In any case, gender is on a sliding scale and society needs to talk about that sliding scale. How should we treat people who are XXY or XYY? Perhaps it doesn't affect physical development but we need to be aware and have the discussion. The world is NOT just bipolar. And those who see only a bipolar universe need to understand there are more choices than they may be aware of.
Karyotype is not sex. Chromosomal conditions affecting reproductive anatomy are wed-specific. The notion of a male person being “mentally a female” is absurd and a blatant category error.
we need to get real. there is no such thing as "gender identity" as some inalienable trait. the entire industry has its origins in immoral surgeons preying upon deranged men who had a pathological desire to change sex, whether so as to satisfy their own sexual fetishes surrounding the idea, or to escape their own homosexuality (and also satisfy their sexual urges by attracting straight men via sexual mimicry).
trans has now become a cult of extreme body modification whereby one can claim membership in a sacred societal caste for whom sex does not matter. we do this for no other category of person. the people who engage in body modification to resemble animals are not protected by animal welfare laws. Nor do they get to change their legal documents
there exists a social contract around sex and sexual boundaries, in the same way there exists a social contract around age and age boundaries. we consider crimes against children and elder abuse to be particularly heinous since those groups are vulnerable. opening the door to men to violate the boundaries of women in situations of vulnerability, be it bathrooms, locker rooms, hospital wards, prison, or shelters is to render those boundaries meaningless. furthermore, our perception of the sex of other is an innate, subconscious reflex, which is fundamental to our species' survival and as a defense mechanism. women need to know who men are to avoid danger. children lost in crowds are taught to seek out women when seeking help. not men who have a compulsion to masquerade as women.
this is the largest scandal, societal and medical, our society has ever seen. and the damage it will have wrought is unimaginable
The experimental gene therapy shots are in the running, too.
At age 73, I don’t think I’ve ever seen an ideological offensive with the scope, momentum, and potential for widespread severe (and perhaps irreversible) societal damage as this QT+/gender-affirming movement. In my humble opinion, this is a social & cultural tsunami of world-historical proportions.
Elizabeth: you and others like you MUST be heard and listened to. Thank you for this amazing letter and the important sources & resources it links to.
Glenn: please, PLEASE give serious consideration to the possibility that, as Elizabeth suggests, this might be even bigger than the problems of race & racism which you have so courageously and effectively confronted throughout most of your life. And thank you so much for sharing Elizabeth’s letter.
Thanks for your kind words Ken, and for being another voice in this wilderness.
I could care less if someone transforms their body, as long as they are doing it with a rational mind and an understanding of the risks involved, but I draw the line when they attempt to coerce speech. The sexualization of children, making choices for children, leading children down a path they may later regret, drawing conclusions predicated upon false premises, bad data, bad incite, is also concerning to me. I highly doubt that any psychologist knows the sexual orientation of a five year old. I didn't start thinking about women sexually until I was almost 12., and even at that age it was more curiousity and intrigue than what one would describe as lust.
Thanks for this article and letter, important points. As a parent I feel I could have written a lot of this. I have to point out that with gender treatments, puberty blockers are recommended at the outset of puberty at the earliest, think tweens. Small children are not prescribed puberty blockers, there would be no reason to do so, even if for precocious puberty, that doesn't start in the "small children" time frame to my knowledge.
I love this letter, and am grateful my work is linked in it (thanks to Elizabeth!). My comment is really just about the title, Glenn. We already know the two sides. This is a side never acknowledged, especially not in the NYT piece this week. It's the dissenting, evidence-based left that is generally accepting of diversity in gender and sexuality but differentiates between trans people and gender identity ideology. This is the hidden side, the silenced side, the other other side. I spent most of my time trying to create work that liberals can pass onto other liberals. I have tried relentlessly to get these pieces into the mainstream media, for which I worked as a freelancer for almost 20 years. But I have been mostly (not completely!) unsuccessful. This is the most nuanced side, the one it's most necessary to hear from because it seeks to understand the issue from multiple points of view. Thanks for letting Elizabeth share hers here.
Yes! "This is the hidden side, the silenced side, the OTHER other side." So grateful to you Glenn for sharing my perspective that, as Lisa says, is so rarely heard. Especially since you are new to understanding these issues and still considering your position, it was a risk. There is a pretty steep learning curve, but thanks to independent journalists like Lisa and Matt Taibi (he has a bombshell piece out just today) I hope that the tide is turning. Another incredible writer I don't think I linked to is Eliza Mondegreen. Every post of Eliza's is a gem. https://elizamondegreen.substack.com/
I just want to chime in to say that I am a subscriber to both Lisa Selin Davis's and Eliza Mondgreen's substacks and am consistently impressed by the depth of their knowledge and insight.