Excellent! "Telling children that ‘your defective body can be fixed’ is the opposite of what children need to develop resilience." How did we go the wrong way on this?
And, “The main effect of believing that you somehow mysteriously landed on earth with an incorrect body is that you fail to feel grateful for the body you have.”
It is time to correct this ungrateful, cognitive distortion that medicalizing the body is acceptable and should be celebrated. The body is not the problem!
So well explained and compassionate. Thanks Lucy. I grieve for all those young women who are being so cruelly misled and will never discover the wonders of their female bodies and the joy of nursing a newborn.
Lucy Leader, my eyes welled up reading this article and thinking of my babies they day we finally met face to face. Just like you so beautifully describe, "every baby born deserves at least one person who thinks that he or she is the most incredible baby ever". Is that not what mothers are design to do? Still today, so many years after that first precious moment, my motherly eyes can only see a perfect child. They are the delight of my eyes and the joy of my heart. How insane to entertain the thought that their bodies could be 'wrong'? This insanity must stop. If every child understood how absolutely perfect they are, this damaging beliefs would have no power over us.
"Taking on a trans identity is a guarantee of continuous stress as you attempt to achieve the impossible, while at the same time you are at the mercy of your ‘audience’ who, if they aren’t continually reinforcing your confusions, add more stress to your life." - this is why they always scream "we exist!" because without us, their audience, their built up perception of themselves doesn't exist, so they feel their world crumble. A society that encourages this fragility will crumble too.
> It became politically expedient back in the 90s for gays and lesbians to talk about being born 'that way' and having known it from a very young age.
It became possible because they were finally able to tell the truth as they knew it. It was not a matter of political experience, but rather a matter of explaining a personal fact that—even now, as we see here—some people refuse to believe because they find it inconvenient, or something.
> It's impossible to know. There are simply too many possible influences on sexual development to factor in all of them to figure it out. Believe me, I tried.
I think that you know full well that this is not what we were talking about. Something is only incidentally "politically expedient" if that thing is, in fact, true. Other people having a life experience different from your own does not invalidate your own, and it is the height of arrogance to claim that these people are telling convenient fictions. Sexual orientation is a personal characteristic as inextricably mine as my handedness.
There may well be people whose experience of sexual orientation is of a choice. That is perfectly fine. They just need to be conscious enough not generalize their experience to everyone. That smacks of desperate wish-fulfillment.
You wrote a comment that implied that people talking about their sexual orientation as innate were, at best, telling politically convenient stories. You did not consider the possibility that people were telling the truth as they knew it.
Why on Earth should we not consider self-reportal valid for public policy? Is there any way that I could prove that I am actually left-handed, not a recalcitrant right-hander, without that?
Arbitrarily excluding information because you do not like where it comes from is a bad thing to do.
And yes, the people who do assume sexual orientation is wholly and entirely a conscious choice are creepy and pathetic. Whether we are talking about lesbians who assume that women would actually want to be with other them if they had a choice, or gay men who think the same of straight men, this is a line of belief that if unchecked takes you to creepy places. Best not to take it at all; but then, I am not you.
Excellent! "Telling children that ‘your defective body can be fixed’ is the opposite of what children need to develop resilience." How did we go the wrong way on this?
And, “The main effect of believing that you somehow mysteriously landed on earth with an incorrect body is that you fail to feel grateful for the body you have.”
It is time to correct this ungrateful, cognitive distortion that medicalizing the body is acceptable and should be celebrated. The body is not the problem!
So well explained and compassionate. Thanks Lucy. I grieve for all those young women who are being so cruelly misled and will never discover the wonders of their female bodies and the joy of nursing a newborn.
Lucy Leader, my eyes welled up reading this article and thinking of my babies they day we finally met face to face. Just like you so beautifully describe, "every baby born deserves at least one person who thinks that he or she is the most incredible baby ever". Is that not what mothers are design to do? Still today, so many years after that first precious moment, my motherly eyes can only see a perfect child. They are the delight of my eyes and the joy of my heart. How insane to entertain the thought that their bodies could be 'wrong'? This insanity must stop. If every child understood how absolutely perfect they are, this damaging beliefs would have no power over us.
Thank you for speaking up!
"Taking on a trans identity is a guarantee of continuous stress as you attempt to achieve the impossible, while at the same time you are at the mercy of your ‘audience’ who, if they aren’t continually reinforcing your confusions, add more stress to your life." - this is why they always scream "we exist!" because without us, their audience, their built up perception of themselves doesn't exist, so they feel their world crumble. A society that encourages this fragility will crumble too.
Beautifully written Lucy.
> It became politically expedient back in the 90s for gays and lesbians to talk about being born 'that way' and having known it from a very young age.
It became possible because they were finally able to tell the truth as they knew it. It was not a matter of political experience, but rather a matter of explaining a personal fact that—even now, as we see here—some people refuse to believe because they find it inconvenient, or something.
(Oh, sorry. "We.")
> It's impossible to know. There are simply too many possible influences on sexual development to factor in all of them to figure it out. Believe me, I tried.
I think that you know full well that this is not what we were talking about. Something is only incidentally "politically expedient" if that thing is, in fact, true. Other people having a life experience different from your own does not invalidate your own, and it is the height of arrogance to claim that these people are telling convenient fictions. Sexual orientation is a personal characteristic as inextricably mine as my handedness.
There may well be people whose experience of sexual orientation is of a choice. That is perfectly fine. They just need to be conscious enough not generalize their experience to everyone. That smacks of desperate wish-fulfillment.
And I did not disagree with you, did I?
You wrote a comment that implied that people talking about their sexual orientation as innate were, at best, telling politically convenient stories. You did not consider the possibility that people were telling the truth as they knew it.
Why on Earth should we not consider self-reportal valid for public policy? Is there any way that I could prove that I am actually left-handed, not a recalcitrant right-hander, without that?
Arbitrarily excluding information because you do not like where it comes from is a bad thing to do.
And yes, the people who do assume sexual orientation is wholly and entirely a conscious choice are creepy and pathetic. Whether we are talking about lesbians who assume that women would actually want to be with other them if they had a choice, or gay men who think the same of straight men, this is a line of belief that if unchecked takes you to creepy places. Best not to take it at all; but then, I am not you.