She knew she was a boy
Charlie Evans gave this speech at the Lesbian Strength Rally in Leeds yesterday:
A decade ago, I was 17 years old. I was tightly binding my chest, and had shaved my hair, adamant that I was not a girl. I knew I was a boy, because I hated the way my chest attracted attention, I hated my period, I hated attention from boys.
I knew I was a boy, because I loved cars, and trucks, and mud, and boxing, and girls. I knew I was a boy, because I didn’t ‘act’ like a girl – nothing about my character ‘felt’ girly, and trans ideology says everyone feels their gender. I didn’t feel like a girl.
I knew I was a boy because I meet the diagnostic criteria for gender dysphoria – a strong rejection of typically feminine toys and typically feminine clothes, mostly male friends, a sense that my feelings and reactions were typical of boys, the desire to be treated as a boy.
When I spoke about these experiences to older friends, or in online chat rooms, the message was affirming. Nobody encouraged the idea that it’s okay to be gender non conforming, Instead, friends and healthcare practitioners alike ‘affirmed’ my gender. Yes, you are a boy.
By now I had been indoctrinated into the belief that boys and girls must act and feel certain ways, and if they don’t, they might be the opposite sex trapped in the wrong body.
She says there are thousands like her, but their voices are stifled because the queer community doesn’t want to hear.
Many – maybe most – are gender non conforming lesbians, who were raised in gendered homes where the roles of girls and boys were strictly defined. No wonder they felt like boys. Most desisted at the same age as me – around age 25. This is not a coincidence.
This is the age your brain becomes fully developed.
Again, there are no real scientific studies on this, but here’s my theory, as a biologist.
During adolescence, your brain is almost completely remoulded. Your prefrontal cortex, this part at the front of your head, is the last bit to develop. It is responsible for some really important stuff – controlling impulses, solving problems, making decisions, seeing what impact your choices have on your future.
Not cutting off your tits or your dick.
It’s the part that makes us responsible adults, and why teenagers can sometimes seem erratic.
The maturation of the brain in this way is caused by sex hormones, which are specifically increased during puberty for the purpose of developing the brains ability to learn, remember, cope with emotions, and process social interactions. As far as we know, these changes are permanent. The brain’s development will continue until you are about 25.
Is it possible that the reason most women desist in their twenties is because that is when their brain has fully developed?
If we know the vital role that sex hormones have in the development of the brain, why are we give pre-teens hormone blockers that are preventing this?
Why are we giving teenagers the choice to have cross sex hormones almost ten years before the part of the brain responsible for decision making and understanding consequences has even developed?
Hmmm well when you put it that way it doesn’t seem like such a good idea, does it.
It is also concerning that once a teenager has started taking hormone blockers, they are much more likely to transition. And as far as I can see, this is because hormone blocking makes desisting difficult – it almost completely destroys any chance of their brains maturing properly, and working out their issues with their bodies.
This should be a huge concern for scientists, doctors, and other medical practitioners, but the research on the subject and conversations around this are almost entirely absent.
Where there should be research, there is silence.
Instead, we hear time and time again that hormone blockers are safe, despite the science suggesting they’re dangerous and we continue to commit children into a path of painful surgeries and lifelong hormone replacement treatment.
Lesbian youth are exceptionally vulnerable to this type of ideology, particulaly as many will be gender non conforming. Coupled with the oppression of the female sex more generally, many young lesbians will match the criteria needed for them to start hormone blockers from as young as ten years old.
It’s almost as if trans activists and their fans want to get rid of lesbians – not by killing them off but by encouraging them to think they’re “in the wrong body.”
When the ideology is that Behavior Should Match Body, then where do lesbians fit? Sexual attraction, coupling, marriage, all that: they’re part of behavior, aren’t they. The ideology can’t make sense of lesbians, so hey, might as well pretend puberty-blockers and transition are a bed of roses.
I could not have predicted that ten years into the future, I wouldn’t have the same feelings of self loathing as I did as a teen. I could not have predicted that by allowing my brain to mature, I would grow out of the idea that there is such a thing as a ‘boy’ brain or a ‘girl’ brain and I had been born with the wrong one.
…
Let your brain mature before making any life changing decisions.
Being a woman is not a feeling. It is not an emotion. It is just our biology. It has no bearing on our interests, our hobbies, our clothes. Rejecting traditional ideas of what it means to be a woman, does not make you a man.
I did not go on hormone blockers.
If I had, I have no doubt that I would not have been standing here today comfortable in my sex. I don’t know if I would have regretted the decision or else lived half a life, not knowing what true liberation meant.
Liberation is not changing your body to fit society. Liberation is changing society to fit you.
Let’s do that instead.
Hear, hear.
powerful stuff. Now for the Trans lobby chiming in that this first hand account doesn’t count because… in 1, 2, 3.
Surprising that “Medium” would publish such an honest piece.
Any stakes on time before retraction?
That sounds hard. Back to the chopping board?
Luckily US society seems to have come very far in accepting gender-noncomforming people. Well, to be blunt about it, gender-noncomforming women. Cars, trucks, mud, men’s clothes…does anybody even bat an eyelash at that anymore? Liking other women — OK, so you’re a lesbian. Men can push it quite a bit more than in the past, but once they get past being a little androgynous…yeah, lipstick and dresses on a man are going to draw a lot of attention. Even if you’re gay.
It’s a shame that just as society has become more accepting, people are being encouraged to not be accepting of themselves as they are. I don’t have stats, but it seems transmen are a bigger thing by far in the U.K. than the US. Perhaps there is less acceptance of gender-noncomforming women in the U.K.? It also seems that feminine men are more accepted in the U.K., and there seem to be fewer transwomen there.
Moral: You can like trucks, girls and hanging out with boys and still be a girl.
HOODATHUNKIT?
TRAs have not thought this through to its logical conclusion. If they get rid of all the lesbians, who is it that “lesbian” TIMs think they are going to coerce into having sex with them? Against whom shall they rail about the “cotton ceiling?” /s
Why should this be part of the diagnostic criteria for anything? Yes, there was a time when some women would be institutionalized for not conforming. Yes, there was a time when women were ostracized for not conforming. Yes, there was a time when women were strictly trained to conform. But a diagnostic criterion in the 21st century? Shiiiiiiit.
Strange how many of us felt a lot of the same things – not wanting to play ‘girl’ games with ‘girl’ toys; not wanting to wear ‘girl’ clothes, not wanting to do ‘girl’ chores and ‘girl’ work – but did not reach the conclusion that we were, therefore, boys. We reached the conclusion that society is screwed up and needs to be adjusted to fit reality. And yes, I came from a strictly enforced gender conforming family. I just decided I was adopted (I wasn’t).
“Why should this be part of the diagnostic criteria for anything?”
It wouldn’t, if this were actual medicine instead of made-up nonsense to justify the sexual fetishes of middle-aged men.
iknklast @7,
And note that, since gender stereotypes vary by culture, so too should the diagnosis. A girl who likes sports would have been gender nonconforming before Title IX, now she wouldn’t be. Same thing for wearing jeans. A boy who likes to dance is gender nonconforming if he’s North American and white, but not otherwise. I can only presume that a boy who likes to wear skirts is GNC unless he’s a Scot.
What about video games? Maybe that’s the new frontier for men who want to preserve their male-dominated professions, hobbies, and interests: when a woman shows up with an interest in the subject, just question her womanhood. Hey, maybe there aren’t are “real” women skeptics after all, just some trans men who don’t know it yet!
Although I like the speech overall, I am somewhat wary of the implication that we should use the “brains don’t fully mature until 25” factoid as a guide for public policy. I recognize that Steele isn’t explicitly saying “no medical interventions until 25,” but isn’t that the logical conclusion of the argument? I think there’s a difference between “your brain is not fully developed yet” and “you don’t have the right to make decisions about your body.”
Screechy, I think the intervention question comes down to definitions, and pseudo-scientific bias in definitions.
For example, I’d be comfortable saying “no elective cosmetic surgery should be performed on people under 25.” No tummy-tucks, no nose jobs, no boob implants, and no genital mutilation. Cosmetic surgery to repair a defect, such as a hairlip, would be a different story. And both my minor children have their ears pierced, so obviously that doesn’t count. It’s not really surgery if it’s a tattoo parlor, right?
Now, I would define sex-change surgery as “elective cosmetic surgery.” But the transactivists wouldn’t. They might say “fine, no elective cosmetic surgery. But this is not elective cosmetic surgery.” You know the ideology: it’s “gender affirmation.” It’s “medically necessary.”
Is it true that white boys don’t dance? That explains a lot. So sad.
Straight white boys. And that’s not universal, since both my husbands dance, and one of them is straight. But it is seen as a sign of being a “sissy”, or shorthand for “gay”.
Papito,
What about vasectomies and tubal ligation? I’ve heard anecdotal reports of men in their 20s being denied vasectomies because the doctor patronizingly says “you’ll change your mind someday.” (I can only assume that it’s worse for young women seeking sterilization.)
Anglos are crazy. I am glad my boy is Latino, because trying to imagine him being ashamed to dance is very sad for me. I pulled in my beautiful wife with my sweet salsa moves and my good cooking. In Latin culture, it’s considered shameful to go to a party and stand around too afraid to dance. There are even words for that, like pariguayo. It’s actually considered worse than being gay, because at least gay people are fun. Seriously, I’m googling this stuff about men not dancing now and I didn’t know this history. I’ve lived in and out of the US for over fifty years now and I guess I’ve just avoided that part of the culture, I have always been dancing. It’s giving me the creeps now reading about this.
Screechy, yes. I see everything right with doctors refusing to perform irreversible sterilization, for whatever motive, on people whose reason is not mature. It may be patronizing to say “You’ll change your mind someday,” but it would be a simple statement of fact to say “Odds are sufficient that you will change your mind someday that it would be unethical for me to do this.”
Re diagnostic criteria: I’d imagine gender nonconformity is a criterion for gender dysphoria in the sense that someone who is eagerly gender conforming cannot possibly be diagnosed with dysphoria.
IMHO, anyone who has brains and a spine is to some extent gender non-conforming, because who on earth really fits the straight jacket of either gender stereotype?
Nor the gay men, but they’re men so… apparently that means they get a free pass.
I thought that the newer generations of straight white boys were much less averse to dancing than those of my aged cohort. The only reason one of us would dance was to possibly get laid, which was regarded as a sufficient reason for doing any number of otherwise foolish things such as dancing.
This generally required a few drinks first to loosen up and numb feelings of embarrassment until the threshold level for dancing was achieved. Then a slow stream of continued alcohol to sustain this level without crossing the threshold of falling over and being physically, as opposed to psychologically, unable to dance.
And I, having never danced, never learned to, never wanted to, have inverted thresholds. Just call me ‘pariguayo’.
Maybe. I don’t see it in the students that come through. Dancing is less even than it was when I was in high school, where some of the boys liked to show off for the girls. But the dating scene has changed so much, and I guess hook ups don’t require dancing.
Yeah, why have fun and flirting when you can get straight to the porn-fucking and choking.