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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   2739 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 30, 2025

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I'm finally going to write an overview of the whole trans cult/ideology because I'm tired of otherwise seemingly intelligent and well meaning people arguing with me about it.

Could you all send me your best deep dives into the topic of transgenderism, both pro and con?

Best? How about worst? Here's a weirdo on X claiming that Google was to online trans social contagion what the Wuhan Institute was to covid. The account has been banned, so all I have is this screenshot and a link to Ogi Ogas' Google Tech Talk, A Billion Wicked Thoughts:

And what we found from our research is that there are four parts of the body that men are interested in universally, in every country we looked at including preliterate, unwired countries as well. Four body parts that all heterosexual men are interested in — it's breasts, butts, feet, and the fourth body part was a big surprise to us, something we completely didn't anticipate. It turns out that the fourth body part that heretosexual men are very interested in looking at is the penis.

Ogi then talks about "shemale porn" (as well as Edward Cullen; remember, this is 2011) as an "erotical illusion":

An erotical illusion combines different sexual cues in new combinations to trick out the sexual brain. So let me talk about shemale porn. Again, this is very popular among heterosexual men; gay men are not interested in shemale porn. This was a surprise, when we went into this we had no idea that shemale porn was going to be so popular. Obviously this is something that men aren't comfortable talking about but the data is quite overwhelming about that this is universally popular, immensely popular. So why are straight men so interested in shemale porn?

I don't know if it's as clear a smoking gun as the departed poaster says, but the talk is certainly interesting, and I could imagine impressionable young men rewiring themselves if they jerked it to enough shemale porn during their formative years. Ogi also talks about paranormal romance as a way for authors to manipulate the cues that trigger female erotical illusions in new ways. Someone should do an effortpost on the line from paranormal romance to romantasy and the women that wirehead themselves on it ("we saw many women in their mid to late 40s who are just absolutely sexually obsessed with Edward Cullen"), but I'll stay on today's topic.

It's probably also worth trying to untangle why, despite all the rhetoric around passing, some trans-identifying men seem to put effort into specifically not passing, despite claiming the exact opposite. If you're that worried about passing, a trans pride flag on your laptop or a trans tattoo is really not going to make it easier. The only thing I can think of is that for this class of trans-identifying man, it's less about passing as a woman and more about forcing other people to interact with him as a woman.

Also don't forget the things that Strangio said to SCOTUS during Skrmetti: it's been known for some time that "there is no evidence to support the idea that medical transition reduces adolescent suicide rates".

/images/1764661267906849.webp

Best? How about worst? Here's a weirdo on X claiming that Google was to online trans social contagion what the Wuhan Institute was to covid.

What's supposed to be so schizo about that? The idea that companies with such a massive reach wouldn't conduct bizarre social experiments is the one that strikes me as implausible.

Also in a similar vein, pornhub was/is also pushing men in that direction

I think the idea is plausible, I just also think that my screenshot of half a twitter thread and one old tech talk is not the strongest evidence in favor of it.

I hope you look into the trans medical perspective as opposed to just debunking the modern progressive viewpoints.

Gender dysphoria is a genuine medical condition and even you write a the perfect rationalist takedown of the “trans cult”, it wouldn’t change anything for the average trans person. No one who has profound distress at having breasts and can’t bare to look at themselves in the mirror will cancel their top surgery (or stop wearing a binder, or go abroad if you made the surgery illegal locally) after a convincing philosophical argument about the definition of “woman”.

Like others mentioned, Zack M. Davis has written tens of thousands of words on the subject from a rationalist point of view, and it’s clearly a desperate coping mechanism for a psychiatric condition/neurological problem that he’s unwilling to have properly treated.

For some medical deep dives, I like Dr Power’s subreddit and its wiki for a bleeding edge take, and this classic from 1966 which shows the medical necessity of treating transsexuals from a time before there was any “gender ideology”.

Gender dysphoria is a genuine medical condition and even you write a the perfect rationalist takedown of the “trans cult”, it wouldn’t change anything for the average trans person.

You put several claims into one sentence:

  1. There is a genuine medical condition called "gender dysphoria"
  2. It's the same condition "trans cult" is concerned with
  3. The concerns of "trans cult" are purely medical and only go as far as medical necessities for the above-mentioned condition go.
  4. "Average trans person" is the person who has the genuine medical condition above, and in fact, every person that declares oneself "trans person" is automatically suffers from that condition by virtue of that declaration
  5. There is no other way to treat this condition except by accepting the demands of "trans cult"
  6. The treatment above is a necessity for an "average trans person" and without it they would suffer objective grave harm

Obviously, some of these claims could be true without others being true at the same time. I could probably grant you 1 and maybe a part of 2, but others are in no way a given.

I’m very confused as to how you made the leap to those other claims. If you’re at all familiar with progressive views on being trans, they literally say you don’t need dysphoria to be trans, and they are firmly opposed to transmedicalism, favouring an identity affirmation based approach.

@ArjinFreeman has it right, I think you’re the one conflating my views when I’m only arguing for point 1.

The claim I am addressing is:

Gender dysphoria is a genuine medical condition and even you write a the perfect rationalist takedown of the “trans cult”, it wouldn’t change anything for the average trans person

If you are only arguing point 1, then gender dysphoria being a genuine medical condition does not support the "trans cult" and has little bearing to the discussion about the cult and the "average trans person", because as you yourself said, the cult's claims go way beyond medical conditions, and they also do not identify "average trans person" with one having the condition. So it's like saying "vitiligo is a real medical condition" and arguing that is a very important insight into racial relationships in the US. Yes, it also about skin color, but it's completely different issue.

I’m getting a bit confused by your point so let me try and clarify what I meant:

A lot of the debate around being trans - e.g. are trans women truly women? Do people have an “inner gender identity”? Doesn’t change the reality which is that some people are distressed by having the characteristics of their natal sex and being perceived as a man/a woman, and want to transition with the goal of reducing that dysphoria. Some succeed in that they are eventually perceived as the opposite sex in most social situations and significantly reduce their dysphoria.

You can argue that alternative treatments should be researched instead, that medical transition is now insufficiently gatekept, that there is bias in research with regards to outcome, or even that it should be banned because it will lead to more harm overall.

But debates like “a woman is an adult who produces large gametes, so trans women aren’t women” versus “no, a woman is anybody who identifies as one”, would have no bearing on the above, and even if you thoroughly debunked the second collection of viewpoints, it wouldn’t matter to the practical reality of treating gender dysphoria.

A lot of the debate around being trans - e.g. are trans women truly women? Do people have an “inner gender identity”?

I'm sure some of the debate concerns these points. But the trans debate includes much more than that, and the "trans cult" demands much more than agreeing about "inner identity".

But debates like “a woman is an adult who produces large gametes, so trans women aren’t women” versus “no, a woman is anybody who identifies as one”, would have no bearing on the above

On the above no, because people are free to have "inner identity" completely untethered to any real events or facts. I could think I am actually a teapot, and nothing in medical science would convince me otherwise. There's no argument that may prevent me from feeling this way, and there's no argument that can prove I am not, in my deep inner thoughts, consider myself a teapot. There's nothing to debate here - either I think this way, or I don't, and if I do, then I do, there's nothing to debate. The debate is about what does this mean and what consequences and actions are appropriate for the society to take in this situation. And to that debate, of course, a lot more things than "could some people in their inner thoughts think they are other things than they are" have bearing. We know for a fact that yes, people can have "inner thoughts" that disagree with objective reality. The question is what to do about it. And to that question, saying "yes, could be are such thoughts" advances us very little towards the answer.

it wouldn’t matter to the practical reality of treating gender dysphoria

Of course it would matter, since there are multiple ways to treat a medical condition. But also you just said that "average trans person" and "person having gender dysphoria" is not the same thing, so if we talk about the whole debate, it would of course also matter whether or not we are dealing with actual medical condition in a particular case - even while we recognize the actual medical condition is real.

You put several claims into one sentence:

I don't think so? I read it more like: even if claims 2-6 are false that does not disprove claim 1. I happen to be pretty skeptical of claim 1 myself, but I'm not seeing any underhanded conflation here.

I doesn't disprove 1, it does disprove the claim that GD being a medical condition has relevance on the discussion of "trans cult" and "average trans person".

Ok, another way I would formulate their point is "the 'trans cult' is not relevant to the average trans person, so please don't limit your discussion of the issue to internet crazies, goofy academics, etc.". This would give you half a point on claim 4, but only half, because "and in fact, every person that declares oneself 'trans person' is automatically suffers from that condition by virtue of that declaration" is not stated anywhere or even implied. Trans-med's are kinda on the outs of the progressive movement precisely because they disagree with that claim.

another way I would formulate their point is "the 'trans cult' is not relevant to the average trans person

Trans cult is relevant to the society and thus to the trans person as part of that society. Yes, "internet crazies, goofy academics" etc. are not the only part of the debate - but also the "trans cult" is way bigger than a couple of crazies and some goofy professor in some obscure classroom. It's something that dictates day to day policy on the ground - and very successfully at that, I am not seeking that stuff out specifically and yet I read about various scandals related to trans issues pretty much every week. If I were a female, the question of "if I go to a locker room, will I encounter there a bearded man with his penis out looking at me undress" would be a very practical question for me now, and a question of "if I am a female athlete, is the second place the best I can hope for now, and how soon before it becomes fifth place or I get seriously hurt" is a practical one too. And none of these questions are really answered by "yes, there's such a condition as gender dysphoria".

It's not meant to answer them. All they're doing is asking OP to give some time to the best pro-trans argument, which in their estimation is transmedicalism.

You can dispute that trans-med is representative of the average trans person, and say that the Queer Theory wing of the trans movement has most of the power and influence. Hell, you can even question the validity of the diagnosis itself like I do, but I don't see how you can say they conflated any of the claims you listed with the main claim they actually made.

Gender dysphoria is a genuine medical condition.

What would be the argument for that? Calling anything in psychology a genuine medical condition seems to be a bit of a tall order.

Gender Dysphoria is a genuine medical phenomenon feels more accurate than assigning it as a 'condition' perse.

But why, though? In my opinion for something to be classified as medical, it need to have some physiological mechanism behind it. I suppose you can say that the condition / phenomenon is real, we just don't quite know the mechanism yet, but in that case the bare minimum would be being able to tell fake cases apart from the real ones. For example doctors were able to tell Tourette's apart from TikTok-Tourette's, do we have anything like that for gender dysphoria?

One of the links I gave above shows a surprisingly large correlation between gender dysphoria and measurable physical conditions (e.g. atypical oestrogen signalling). Unfortunately few people bother investigating these due to political factors - many pro-trans people are afraid of a "trans cure", and most anti-trans people see it as a made-up condition and that you fix it by making being trans illegal/socially unacceptable.

What "counts" is a difficult problem, and I don't think almost anyone has meaningfully consistent lines. I recall looking at some work long ago that found a neat correlation between particular physical signals and infidelity behavior (with a nice theoretical mechanism explanation and an animal model to boot). I remembered it mostly because it was a surprising contrast to the complete lack of results that were anywhere near that quality in the raging public discussion concerning sexual orientation. I doubted that any of the people who wanted to take a strong stance on sexual orientation would take a similar stance on infidelity, and well, yeah, I kind of doubt that most people would be willing to compare the types of evidence available for gender dysphoria stuff and have a consistent view on what "counts".

One of the links I gave above shows a surprisingly large correlation between gender dysphoria and measurable physical conditions (e.g. atypical oestrogen signalling).

Which one? I clicked all 3, ctrl+F'ed for "atopical" and "oestrogen" and got nothing.

Also, isn't this a bit hasty? Potentially having a physical condition to point to is a good start, not a smoking gun showing this is genuine medical condition.

many pro-trans people are afraid of a "trans cure"

I'd guess the bigger issue is there being objective criteria for telling people they're not trans.

and most anti-trans people see it as a made-up condition and that you fix it by making being trans illegal/socially unacceptable.

Uh, not really. Most anti trans people see it the same way they see anorexia. In both cases some form of distress is driving people to take drastic, detrimental to their health, steps to modify their body. In one case we try to dissuade them from it, in the other the medical establishment decided it's a great idea to do affirmarion only. The part that is seen as made up are the sociological theories on gender identity.

They don't want to make being trans illegal or socially unacceptable, they want to ban medical providers from offering unethical services (again, consider an alterntive world where anorexia clinics are there to help people starve themselves), repeal pro-transt laws and/or remove the social pressure that forces everybody else to play along with trans ideology.

Sure. I think my general approach is that if trans is some weird mental disorder that like .2% of the population get, whatever. I can see that happening, and it's probably not too harmful to let them cross dress.

Modern trans ideology is far, far, far away from that and is evil. Even if we let transgender people cross dress, it still needs to be weird. Normativity being enforced around the heterosexual family is crucial imo.

Being a transsexual is not treatable by crossdressing and requires hormonal replacement therapy at a minimum, and usually surgery. If you look at that 1966 book I linked, the author brought up a treatment plan where the patient would take hormones but otherwise dress and appear as their natal sex.

Do share what angle you’ll be going for if I’m wrong, but I don’t think you will have much headway with the people you’re arguing with (I assume highly educated, compassionate people with a progressive bent, perhaps in the rationalist sphere or STEM), from what you’ve shared so far. Those people also view your own ideology as an evil cult, and will oppose you on principle for wanting to enforce hetero norms.

Those people also view your own ideology as an evil cult, and will oppose you on principle for wanting to enforce hetero norms.

Oh I'm well aware. To be quite frank I am mostly writing this to settle my own niggling doubts, and to have an article to refer someone to for the hundredth time someone asks me to explain why I'm anti-trans. I hope it convinces people, but that is not the main goal.

Frankly most of the people I've talked to in the twitter post-rat scene (or tpot) don't seem to have a coherent ideology explaining why they are pro-trans at all, besides "some people are born intersex" and "it's mean to not let them do whatever they want." Along with the classic sob stories followed by the implication that my views are going to make people commit suicide.

Sadly I do believe they're straw men, but hey what can you do. Most people don't think about things very deeply, news at 11.

I think you might strawmanning their replies yourself. The intended message is probably something like

  • Intersex people show that the gender binary is not inviolable - someone can have XY chromosomes but appear completely female externally
  • It costs nothing to be polite and use trans people’s preferred pronouns, and not doing so, or making their lives more difficult, is pointlessly rude and mean spirited
  • If the majority of people had views like yours, the life of trans people would be significantly worse and some would commit suicide, see how it was before widespread trans acceptance in the West, or how it is currently in many parts of the world where being trans means your family disowning you

Although it is X/Twitter, so it is possible you got the replies you wrote verbatim. But I would still encourage you to consider their arguments more charitably, otherwise they might just dismiss you what you wrote after a single one paragraph.

If the majority of people had views like yours, the life of trans people would be significantly worse and some would commit suicide, see how it was before widespread trans acceptance in the West, or how it is currently in many parts of the world where being trans means your family disowning you

Yes but the huge reorientation of society doesn't seem to make a ton of headway on the suicide or social alienation issues, especially considering that human lives are quite long and most transitioners have decades left yet. It's a valid response from society to say 'No you cannot be Trans' and plausible that on the aggregate that aggressively tamping down on the issue is better than leaving a plethora of individuals stuck in weird individual culdesacs of human expression that ultimately produce more sadness than happiness.

The intersex bit is an almost complete nonsequitur. Next stage typically being some sort of 'Historical societies had a third gender, typically a designated sexworker or eunuch-lite therefore I am a hecking validerino'

It's a valid response from society to say 'No you cannot be Trans' and plausible that on the aggregate that aggressively tamping down on the issue is better than leaving a plethora of individuals stuck in weird individual culdesacs of human expression that ultimately produce more sadness than happiness.

The Middle East does that, and I don't think their approach produces more happiness than sadness.

Big chunks of the Middle East are fairly pro-trans all things considered, if only as a weird loophole since homosexuality is verboten and punished by death so it's better to transition anybody with any inclinations.

see how it was before widespread trans acceptance in the West

I notice you're making a factual claim about the recent past here. Do you have any evidence for your claim that suicide rates for trans people have declined over time?

Fair points! Yes and these are the arguments I plan to investigate and take down in depth. I have looked into this topic at length and concluded all of these arguments are fallacious, or at least not worth the costs.

If you're arguing in favor of cisheteronormativity, you probably should be at least aware of the Freedom of Form-style arguments. It, and a thousand weirder variants, are each individually too uncommon to be really necessary to counter or even counterable, but they or stuff like them underlies a lot of the nonbinary and what-you're-probably-seeing-as-ROGD stuff.

I don't know of any good summary articles, but there's also a bit of a will-to-power one: what Defense Distributed's 3d printing and Cathode_G's DIY nitration mixture said to gun control exists for hormonal modifications. You don't really have the ability to make things weird, just difficult. Never underestimate minor inconveniences, perhaps, but it points to policy limitations.

"The Categories Were Made for Man to Make Predictions" by Zack M. Davis, a devastating takedown of Scott Alexander's "The Categories Were Made for Man, Not Man for the Categories".

"Changing Emotions" by Eliezer Yudkowsky approaches transition from a transhumanist angle.

Not a deep dive as such, but I also enjoyed AntiDem's "On the Creation of Unicorns".

Seconding "Categories" as the post to read on Zack's website, though he has plenty of other bangers too.

On the more philosophical side of things:

Brief, 1 hour interview with a Gender Philosopher: https://youtube.com/live/w8D5tyvodSM?si=1tORdLvMpXnTDLLi

Extended discussion/book club on Gender from a Catholic lens (but holy shit I learned so much about contemporary "queering the gender norm" academics): Season 1, Season 2.

On the more medical side of things: https://old.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/15hhliu/the_chen_2023_paper_raises_serious_concerns_about/

https://old.reddit.com/r/detrans/comments/hp0ee4/so_im_actually_a_doctor_who_specializes_in/

How deep do you want to dive? What sort of angle do you want to take? Medical / scientific? Sociological / philosophical? I don't think it's a subject that can be covered by a single write up, and worse, I can't think of a single source I could link you that would cover all the beats. Aside from what the others have recommended, I'd give a shout out to Mia Hughes, who has a knack for covering the history of the phenomenon, and digging out it's historical analogoues. She's the author of the WPATH Files (see chapters "A Brief History Of Transgender Medicine And The Early Days Of WPATH" and "Past Cases Of Pseudoscientific Hormonal And Surgical Experiments"), and the recent review of the NYT "The Protocol" podcast.

My go-to references for the pro-trans side are usually people like Jack Turban and Steven Novella & David Gorsky, though these "muh science" arguments have lost a lot of popularity on the pro-side recently, in the wake of the Cass Review (as well as every other systematic review on the subject that has been published to date), so I don't know how far you'll get addressing them.

@ymeskhout's "In This House, We Believe in Gender Stereotypes", which he originally cross-posted here: there's an interesting discussion in the comments.

In rationalist circles, Scott's post "The Categories Were Made for Man, not Man for the Categories" is a very respected pro-trans article. I used to find it persuasive.

On the pro side, Freddie deBoer has waded into this topic on several occasions, which prompted my response to him:

Wonderful! Huh, didn't realize you were on Substack too, I'll have to follow. Ty for the links.

Excellent! These are wonderful sources ty. Phew this is going to be... interesting.

Jesse Singal is pretty even-handed, even if he's vilified a lot by activists; His position is, as far as I understand it, that the evidence on the entire topic is far too unreliable to act on it the way the medical establishment is currently doing. Diagnostic standards are far to deferential and all the available treatments have muddy positive impacts; If anything, the negative impacts have far better evidence than the positive ones. Nevertheless, he still stresses that we should be tolerant, that most trans-people are perfectly fine, and that this is especially about protecting teens and children from haphazard decisions that will impact their entire life.

Andy Ngo really trashes crazy (violent) left extremism in general, which includes a trans-rate of seemingly >50%. Of course you can't call this representative of anything, but it still gives you a good view into a subgroup that nevertheless enjoys widespread support in media & academia.

Colin Wright (note that this substack also includes some other authors) lands somewhere in-between, generally also primarily highlighting the low evidentiary standards. But he also regularly makes a deliberate point about the primacy of biological sex, and is more openly dismissive of large parts of trans medical care.

Obligatory self-promo: https://firsttoilthenthegrave.substack.com/p/contra-deboer-on-transgender-issues

I recommend binging everything @zackmdavis posted on his old site.

Gender:Hacked by Sarah Mittermaier formerly/also known as Eliza Mondegreen.

A review of Shannon Thrace's memoir 18 Months, her account of how her marriage collapsed after her ex-husband came out as trans.

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