What is gender identity? Since this very new term is now cemented in law, corporate practice, and now medicine as well, it’s a good question.
Here is an official description from HRC, the biggest “queer” lobby:
One’s innermost concept of self as male, female, a blend of both or neither – how individuals perceive themselves and what they call themselves.
The key word, it seems to me, is neither. It means that your gender may not have anything to do with being male or female or on any kind of masculine/feminine spectrum. Your gender identity can be a tree, a fish, a Nazi, a puddle, or an earthworm — and these innermost identities must always be affirmed and be protected in law.
Like most decent people, I am more than fine with accepting that some people really do deeply feel that they are one sex and yet biologically are the opposite one. It’s rare, but very real, and I have long supported care and protection for this tiny minority of marginalized people we now call transgender. Mercifully, they are now covered by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And Americans are on board: in a new poll, support for protecting transgender people from discrimination has 64 percent support and only 10 percent opposition.
But what on earth does it mean to identify as no human gender, neither male nor female nor a mix, but as, say, a tree — and use “tree” as a pronoun? You think I’m kidding, don’t you? Just making shit up to make it sound insane. But wait:
Students are introduced to gender pronouns through the children’s book, “They, She, He: Easy as ABC.” The somewhat familiar pronoun ze is introduced, as are more bespoke possibilities. On one page, “Diego drums and dances. Tree has all the sounds” (tree is Diego’s preferred pronoun). For a character named Sky, all of the pronouns are right.
This is in a first-grade curriculum in Evanston/Skokie School District 65, a public-school system in the Chicago suburbs, as reported by Conor Friedersdorf. The pronoun “tree” has already been deployed by some as legitimate. I noted recently how, in another HRC-recommended book for kids, a baby “can’t decide what to be. Boy or girl? Bird or fish?” Yes: fish. The idea that children can identify as other species has now been approved in the education world. It’s being taught to your kids as truth. It is the Biden administration’s and “LGBTQ+” lobby’s view of what “gender identity” is.
It is anything you want it to be. And must always be affirmed by others.
This week I stumbled across two examples of this exponentially limitless construct. The first is a shop teacher in Canada. The teacher — who identified as a male a year ago — now comes to school and teaches in a woman’s wig and two ginormous fake boobs with sharp protruding nipples. The prosthetic breasts are so huge they are larger than the rest of her upper body and hang pendulously around her waist. This outfit cannot be criticized without violating the person’s “gender identity” as a kind of real-life, milk-porn anime character. Asking her to take off this crazy costume legally violates her human rights.
The second example was when I read the new guidelines for trans healthcare, issued by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. These are the approved medical guidelines for sex-changes now called “gender-affirming care.”
The guidelines remove any clear lower-age limits for puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and removal of healthy organs — allowing any individual treatment at any age. A minor who, in some states, cannot legally have sex, can have breasts and womb removed, clitoris turned into a pseudo-penis, or be fully castrated. But none of this is new. What’s new is another gender identity, requiring more “gender-affirming care.”
That gender identity is a eunuch. Yes: eunuch. Money quote from the most authoritative body on transgender healthcare in a new chapter:
Eunuch individuals will present themselves clinically in various ways. They wish for a body that is compatible with their eunuch identity—a body that does not have fully functional male genitalia. Some other eunuch individuals feel acute discomfort with their male genitals and need to have them removed to feel comfortable in their bodies …
Like other gender diverse individuals, eunuch individuals may be aware of their identity in childhood or adolescence. Due to the lack of research into the treatment of children who may identify as eunuchs, we refrain from making specific suggestions.
Yes, children may identify as eunuchs, according to these experts. And a whole session at the WPATH conference this past week was devoted to the subject. Wes Yang has transcribed the session here. Read the whole thing. One expert noted:
Eunuch is the oldest recognized gender outside the binary. It’s in the Bible … It became the standard route into bureaucracy for religious hierarchy, military, and district administrators throughout the Eurasian landmass … [The reduction in reactive aggression from castration] is part of why they were so prominent in past governance. They make excellent military commanders, they can sit back and carefully plan and organize a campaign without getting caught up in the immediate emotions of it with reactive aggression.
This is called “eunuch calm.” For “eunuch-identified individuals,” it’s also related to early environment:
Close to 30 percent of both the eunuchs and the wannabes [those wanting to be castrated but still with their balls attached] had practical experience with the castration of an animal. They know what the procedure is, they know the results that occur … So there’s a lot of interest out there that is not being taken care of.
The WPATH guidelines also link to a website “which includes graphic and sexually explicit fictional descriptions of child eunuchs. When signing up to the website, called the Eunuch Archive, users are asked to select their interests from a menu of options that includes “forced castration” and “smooth look.” The next speaker at the conference — an endocrinologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston — said:
This is probably one of the most marginalized and stigmatized communities in any culture anywhere across the world ... Withholding treatment will cause individuals harm through self-surgery, surgery by unqualified practitioners, or unsupervised use of medications.
This, of course, is the same rationale for operating on children: that if they don’t treat them, the kids will harm themselves. If this sounds like a return to the 17th century when the Vatican castrated boys to sing in choirs so that their voices would never deepen, well it is:
We have documents from some of the Italian duchies of boys coming and requesting the funds to pay the doctor to get castration, and of the funds being granted. They did fall into this as voluntary, as well.
You really have to read the whole transcript to believe it. This is the same group now determining what can and cannot be done to children who don’t conform to gender stereotypes.
I cite these examples to show that the term “gender identity” is so nebulous, so completely subjective, that it can be used to describe literally anything, any perversion, any mental illness, any deranged fantasy — like South Park’s Gerald Broflovski’s compulsion to become a dolphin. And it’s being used as a construct to tell first-graders that they can identify as a tree and a fish now. In public schools. With the full backing of the president and the Democratic Party.
I’m not nut-picking. I’m using the official description of “gender identity” to show that the term itself is nut-enabling. There are no limiting principles in a truly nebulous product of postmodernism now worming its way into our legal system.
(Note to readers: This is an excerpt of The Weekly Dish. If you’re already a subscriber, click here to read the full version. This week’s issue also includes: my worries over the rise of the far-right party in Sweden after a failure to address mass migration and crime; a debate over religion with Christopher Hitchens at his apartment in 2006; a ton of listener dissents over my pod debate with Louise Perry on the sexual revolution; a reader dissent over DeSantis; a few notable quotes from the week in news; a dozen pieces we recommend by other Substackers; a mesmerizing video of riding a train in Portugal; a window view from Mongolia; and, of course, the results of the View From Your Window contest — with a new challenge. Subscribe for the full Dish experience!)
From a newcomer who succumbed to the long game:
You win! After enjoying the Dish for free for some months (years? I’ve lost track), my Jewish guilt caught up with me and I have subscribed. Your use of “free markets” is shrewd and effective!
The Swedes Turn To The Far Right
It’s a big enough story that much of the US MSM felt obliged to cover it. Sweden, long seen as a progressive, egalitarian nirvana, will now be run by a right-wing government heavily influenced by a former neo-Nazi party, the Sweden Democrats. That party just won 20 percent of the vote in the general election, and is now the second biggest in the country.
As you’ll tell from my brief new intro to this 2006 conversation, my voice right now is so eviscerated I can’t speak at all. Silenced at last! So here is a very early experiment I did with kinda-podcasting, when I took a microphone to Hitch’s place and let the tape roll. A blast from the grave in some ways.
We debated the nature of religion and the global war on terrorism, among other things. For two clips — on the divinity of Jesus, and whether the Golden Rule is actually “cruel and stupid,” as Hitch put it — pop over to our YouTube page. Listen to the whole episode here. The audio quality is a bit rough, but the pod page has a full transcript you can read.
Last week’s episode with Louise Perry caused a torrent of fascinating responses, including Rod Dreher’s accusation that I am “completely consumed” by sexual desire. My response to Rod and others are on this page. Check them out. Here’s a clip from the Perry pod:
In the past you’ve been moderately bullish on DeSantis as a successor to Trumpism and an alternative to what you see as a radicalizing left. Setting aside my own vigorous disagreements with that perspective, I wonder if your view has changed given that in the last few weeks DeSantis has:
Repeatedly referred to the Biden Admin as “the regime” — a pretty open flirtation with the Big Lie and election denialism.
Claimed at NatCon that private corporations should be viewed as extensions of the government (and treated accordingly) when they agree with the president’s social policies.
Tricked asylum seekers from Venezuela onto a plane and flew them across the continent in an act of performative cruelty designed to, somehow, “own the libs.”
This just seems like Trumpism with a slightly better hairdo and worse-fitting suit. I’m wondering if you’ve come to see the same conclusion.
I have indeed been more than a little dismayed, as I’ve previously noted. Still: better than Trump. A quick correction from a reader:
You wrote, “Marriage rates have indeed declined very recently — from a rate of 6.9 per 100,000 in 2017 to 5.1 in 2020.” That should be per 1,000, not 100,000, as per your source.
Thank you for correcting the typo. Apologies. For many more dissents, check out that separate page we created for listener feedback — including Dreher’s — on the sexual revolution. As always, keep the criticism coming: dish@andrewsullivan.com.
This is a feature in the paid version of the Dish spotlighting about a dozen of our favorite pieces from other Substackers every week. This week’s selection covers subjects such as Trump’s civil-war chest, the Iranian protests, and the death penalty. Below is one example, followed by a brand new Substacker:
Nick Clairmont complicates the martyrdom of Jamal Khashoggi.
Kevin Williamson — once hired and quickly canceled at The Atlantic — joins la résistance!
You can also browse all the substacks we follow and read on a regular basis here — a combination of our favorite writers and new ones we’re checking out. It’s a blogroll of sorts. If you have any recommendations for “In the ‘Stacks,” especially ones from emerging writers, please let us know: dish@andrewsullivan.com.
The View From Your Window Contest
Where do you think it’s located? Email your guess to contest@andrewsullivan.com. Please put the location — city and/or state first, then country — in the subject line. Proximity counts if no one gets the exact spot. Bonus points for fun facts and stories. The winner gets the choice of a VFYW book or two annual Dish subscriptions. If you are not a subscriber, please indicate that status in your entry and we will give you a free month subscription if we select your entry for the contest results (example here if you’re new to the contest). Happy sleuthing!
The results for last week’s window are coming in a separate email to paid subscribers later today. One of our sleuths in a recent contest made a plea for a beloved food venue featured in the contest photo:
As COVID wracked the country and Gina Longbottom managed to keep Five Islands Lobster in operation, she and her staff were again dealt a severe blow this year. It appears from their Facebook post that, in addition to the usual troubles in attracting young adults to staff a lobster shack in a rural area, Jessey Marshall, a valued employee and mother of two other employees (her daughters) suffered a brain aneurysm and was hospitalized. This left Five Islands without enough employees to staff the business, thus forcing a closure for the balance of the 2022 season.
I don’t know how much of this, if any, is right for the Dish; maybe this is too much information, and surely it’s not the type of thing we as your cadre of sleuths usually contribute. But my thinking is, that after a decade of our gaining invaluable information and knowledge from what we do to track down these Views you give us — truly a boon to us — we could give ourselves the opportunity to send something back as a result of this exercise.
The Dish donated $344 on behalf of the sleuths of contest #344. Consider chipping in a few bucks.
