ANTI-ANTI-WOKE CLICKBAIT TRANS ARTICLE
HOW TO ANSWER THE "WHAT IS A WOMAN" QUESTION.
Trans is an adjective
Back in 2015 I was writing a comment in response to an article about Caitlin Jenner on Facebook. I thought I was being very liberal and progressive in my acceptance of transgenders. Then someone replied to my comment and said I was wrong to use transgender as a noun. Transgender is an adjective, he said, and should be used to modify the noun as in transgender woman and transgender man. I was enraged at how he wrong he was – I ripped into him: I have taken advanced composition in college and I have used transgender as a noun for years. I live in San Francisco and I know transgenders who never corrected me. HOW DARE YOU, SIR?!
Then I googled it and found out he was right. I quickly deleted my comment.
It turns out that sometime during the early 2000s the word transgender had been changed from a noun to an adjective. The language people do that, they change words and don't notify the public and then people only find about the new terms when they get it wrong. I would like to know who decides these changes and I really wish they would have a public hearing so people could make their case for or against language changes. Oxford English Dictionary shows the word transgender has a history of being used as a noun dating back to 1974 and gives definitions of the word as both a noun and an adjective. Exactly when using it only as an adjective became prominent is not clear.
Tranny is slang, not slur
I just know from my personal experience that in the early 2000s before trans rights became a national issue, transgender was the proper noun and tranny was the slang term. The most popular drag queen club in San Francisco was called Trannyshack at the Stud and every gay club in America would have "Tranny Tuesdays," by having drag shows at what is usually a slow night of the week at bars (trans women and crossdressers would also show up on those nights). At this time the differences between transgender people and drag queens was blurred in the minds of the American public and a little bit in the gay community as well. But it was a slang term and trans people used this term for each other. Transphobes would say things like "you're not a woman, you're a man," just as they do today, but they would not use tranny as a slur. But strangely, history has been rewritten in the minds of the LGBTQ+ community and they believe tranny is and always has been a slur term -- and it is highly offensive to use it. All young trans people believe this to be true, and when the word tranny accidentally pops out of the mouth of a trans woman over 40, they will quickly correct themselves and apologize, as if they had just accidentally dropped the N-bomb.
It's Orwellian how every young trans person will tell you “the word tranny is a slur with a history of bigotry," when it is just not true, and anyone old enough to remember otherwise is too afraid to say anything. Now I'm not proposing people go back to using the word -- the change has been made. I just want people to have an honest perspective on the history of the word. And I ask, why did words that really were used as slurs, like dyke and queer, later become reclaimed as proper terms, while tranny, which was a slang term, get reclassified as a slur?
Jim Norton’s Trans Arc
My theory is that this is the fault of standup comedians and the now defunct "tranny hooker" joke template. Because when you attach the word tranny to the word hooker it does have a negative connotation and it is understandable in this case if trans people feel they are being slurred. The premise of a tranny hooker joke, told by comedians who want to shock the audience, is that while hiring a hooker is a low thing to do, hiring a tranny hooker is the lowest level of sleaze. This joke template was told by a wide range of comedians from Dave Attell to Jon Stewart, who would joke about drug crazed trysts with tranny hookers at cheap hotels.
But the best example would be comedian Jim Norton. Norton’s jokes would be self-depreciating like: look what a scumbag I am for doing this. In the early days I think Norton was struggling with his bisexuality and feeling uncomfortable with his attractions, and he only saw trans women as sex objects. But he has had an arc. Over the years he got to know trans women as people and has adjusted his jokes to be less derogatory. Just recently he came full circle and announced his marriage to a trans woman. She is younger than he is and worked as a webcam model. I am seeing an element of his being a sugar daddy in this, but he also seems sincere and I'm glad he has found happiness. As far as the joke template goes, I'm glad it is gone as it simultaneously puts down sex workers and trans woman. When a comedian wants to shock an audience these days, they do a meth joke instead.
But it’s biology!
Back to trans as an adjective. I think the language change has been a good one that helps bring more clarity. We can now make the distinction between a transgender man and a transgender woman. My meme is making that simple distinction clear. The conservative Christian Matt Walsh made the film What is a Woman, where he would ask trans people and gays in interviews and on the street, “what is a woman?” Because of the new “trans umbrella” of terms used to identify the many new gender identifications, a lot of the people he asked stumbled and couldn’t give a good answer. He then did a victory lap saying he beat the libs at debate because they couldn’t answer his simple question.
I can answer that question without stumbling. Woman is a noun and the definition of a woman is the same as it always has been. But you now need to open your mind to a new category of woman, which is a transgender woman. A transgender woman was born to the male sex and psychologically feels like they were born to the wrong body. Through hormone treatment, surgery, clothes, make-up, etc., they can visually appear to be the gender they feel inside.
And this segues into another gotcha question, “how many genders are there?” And whatever answer a gay progressive may give, the conservatives will say, “there are only two genders and that’s that.” Well, no, there are only two sexes, male and female. Gender is different than sex, so someone who is of the male sex can be of the female gender.
Some genderqueer theorists may tell you there is an infinite spectrum of gender. This is confusing and muddies the waters. I don’t agree with the infinite genders theory – and it’s really just that, a debatable theory – one that will evolve and change over time. I just know they someone with a penis can be female gender and someone with a vagina can be male gender. It doesn’t have to be complicated although many want to make it so. You may meet a wide variety of different types of trans and gay people, with different shades of masculinity and femineity, but how these people identify doesn’t have to be as complicated as genderqueer theorists want to make it. Because then we get into the whole nonbinary concept. But let’s save the nonbinary discussion for another time.
Another thing the transphobes like to say, which they think is a big own, is “those gender ideologues want to tell you a man can have a baby. That’s not biology. A man can’t have a baby.” Ok, well the problem with that statement is no trans person ever said that a man can have a baby. But a transgender man can have one, because that person is of the female sex. No one is asking you to change anything you know about biology; they are just asking you to add a few words to your vocabulary.
A problem with my argument
Everything I have said so far used to be true and easy to understand. But there are new actors who are poking a hole in my argument. These are trans activists who say that a “trans woman is a woman” literally. I think this is a nice thing to say in the spirit of saying that a trans woman should be treated with the same respect as a woman. But transphobes who say a trans woman is a man are wrong and trans activists who say a trans woman is woman are also wrong. A trans woman is a trans woman.
When you say a trans woman is literally a woman then you say they are physically equal to them in the realm of sports. And with sports there is a subcategory of the trans controversy that the right has been successful in using to make the trans community as a whole look bad. And I feel I want to defend the trans movement but how do I defend this development?
It used to be that there were amateur gay volleyball teams in San Francisco and there was a rivalry between the lesbian team and the trans team. Sometimes the lesbians would win one, sometimes the trans would win one. But it was just amateur stuff. No one on the national stage was watching.
In 2003 there was a movie called Beautiful Boxer which tells the true-life story of Parinya Charoenphol (also named Nong Toom), a champion kathoey, Muay Thai fighter in Thailand. Charoenphol started his career as a popular fighter on the international Muay Thai scene. He stood out because he was feminine and fought wearing makeup. After beginning to transition and taking hormones he, now she, continued to fight men. But as the hormones weakened her athletic ability she started to lose fights. Eventually she ended her career and became a popular model and actress. I mention this because this used to be my only reference for trans women in sports. And there didn’t seem anything wrong with it because she was fighting men.
Lia Thomas and taking “trans women are women” a tad too far.
Because of the “a trans woman is a woman” belief we are led to the case of Lia Thomas. Thomas was a University of Pennsylvania swimmer on the men’s team. According to Wikipedia “Thomas . . . ranked sixth-fastest in the 1,000 yard freestyle and also recorded 500-yard freestyle and 1,650-yard freestyle times that ranked within the national top 100,” during her freshman year in 2017. Thomas started transitioning in May 2019 with hormone replacement therapy. This caused a loss of muscle mass, claims Wikipedia, and in the 2019-2020 season when she continued to play for the men’s team, she swam 15 seconds slower than her previous personal bests. And this is an interesting point, because people who publicly denounce Thomas like to say how lowly ranked she was as a man, but the low ranking (65th) they cite is from the year she was competing against men while having the disadvantage of being on hormones.
Thomas actually did lose some races to genetic woman when swimming for the woman’s team but ultimately won the NCAA championship and jumped to a number one ranking among women swimmers. She beat Emma Weyant in that competition but from the news you would think she beat Riley Gaines. Gaines and Thomas tied for fifth place in a separate race. But Gaines later became an activist against trans women competing in woman’s sports and became a darling in conservative circles.
For some reason Gaines thought it would be a good idea to have an anti-trans rally at San Francisco State University. Her speech got an extremely vitriol reaction from a massive crowd of trans activists, who Gaines said assaulted her. She had to barricade herself in a room for protection and needed a police escort to leave.
This event had a lot of similarities to when there were riots (violent clashes between the left and right that went on for months) at Berkeley University over Anne Coulter speaking. Is that necessary? Why not just challenge her to a debate? This kind of extremism makes me nervous because although I am writing an overall pro-trans article here, because I differ on some sub-controversies I could be called denounced by those who demand idea conformity.
It’s funny how things change with the passing of time. When I was a student at San Francisco State in 2003 I proposed a story for the school newspaper about AsiaSF, a restaurant in San Francisco with all trans woman waitresses, who perform lip synch dance shows for the diners. I was turned down by the editors with the rationale that this content would be overly sexual. This was nonsense and my Golden Gate Xpress editors were just being transphobic – if only I had known at the time I could have played the transphobia card and gotten my story published. The Golden Gate Xpress ran an article this year that, not surprisingly, took the side of the trans activists and said Gaines’s assault allegations were false.
Thomas was later barred by World Aquatics from taking part in Olympic Sports because she did not meet the transition requirement of “male-to-female transgender athletes would only be eligible to compete in the women's categories if they transition before the age of 12 or before they reach stage two on the puberty Tanner Scale.” So someone would need to start on puberty blockers before age twelve in order to qualify — otherwise their body would develop into a man’s body. So conservatives who want fair competition should support puberty blockers?
I might be willing to let her pass with lower transition requirements than that. But there would at least need to be a transition that can be seen by the human eye. And the transition Thomas said she did go through is doubtful. She claims she was taking hormones for almost three years before winning the NCAA championship and she has a dip in performance stats to back this up. But I have doubts she was consistently taking the hormones or taking them at the recommended dosages, because when you look at her there just isn’t a transition that can be seen. The biceps and legs muscles look to be the same size and her face and body have not become more curvy or feminine in any way. And Thomas never had top surgery or any feminizing surgery. We have seen what celebrity transitions look like and when you compare those to Thomas we are not really seeing a transition.
And trans people who are not putting any effort into their transition are confusing to normies who don’t understand why they should treat someone who presents as male as if they were someone who presents as female. And this gives ammunition to conservatives who want to make the case that transgenderism is not a legitimate phenomenon and simply arbitrary.
So hopefully there will eventually be a trans sporting league that puts these issues to bed. And after the world reads my article, people will make clear distinctions between sex and gender in the ways that are honest and non-discriminatory. Everyone will be reasonable and fair — not just out to score points for their team. That’s what’s going to happen. Right?
‘Nuff Said.