“By the time of birth, the train has left the station. This does not mean it cannot be stopped in its tracks, but it generally cannot be sent back to the station.” -McCarthy, Kevin Herold, and Sara L Stockman One of the foundational statements of Transgender Ideology, particularly regarding the medicalization of children, is the concept of “the wrong puberty.” The abbreviated version of this concept is that somehow the brain or soul is sexually mismatched from the body and that medicine can force the two into alignment by altering the body. A necessary step in this alignment is preventing the damage “caused by the wrong puberty.” In essence this position relies on the belief that up until puberty girls and boys are the same, that physical dimorphism is only due to sexual maturity and that behavioral differences are entirely social - unless of course they are due to the magic of “gender”.
I've just read a piece from Quillette which discusses the case of Nathaniel Le May (NLM). This is a bit of a bizarre "edge case" that may not seem relevant to the central issues that PITT addresses, but it's one that exposes the limitations of the Gender Cult. We're all aware of "effeminate" men and so it's, perhaps, not too much of a stretch to go from there to the idea of someone being "born in the wrong body". We might find some degree of plausibility in the notion that a very effeminate man is, in some sense, "really" a woman.
Of course it's not plausible, and requires a confused mix-up of sex categories with (stereotypical) behaviours, feelings and personality, but we can at least see why such an idea gains some traction.
The case of NLM is especially interesting when it comes to the whole notion of "the wrong body" and things like "the wrong puberty". NLM identifies as something called Transmasculine Non-Binary. I'm not even going to try to translate this from the new language of Genderish into plain English.
NLM was born as a woman - we might mischievously suggest she was 'assigned' a vagina at birth - but at the grand old age of 41 has now decided that because of her 'gender' she requires the addition of a penis. Not **instead** of her original equipment, but as **as well as**. She is, of course, upset, that her demands for the installation of the new equipment weren't acceded to more quickly than they were. The Quillette article doesn't make it clear exactly where this new equipment is to be installed, but one can only hope it's not on her forehead.
Adopting terminology from trans lexicons, we might say she wants a bonus hole AND a bonus pole.
Was NLM born in the "wrong body"? Did she "suffer" the "wrong" puberty? If so, what on earth is the "right" body for such a person?
It is obvious that NLM is confused and probably mentally unwell and caught in the grip of a deranged ideology. At 41 we, perhaps, think she ought to know better. But if even adults who have gone through puberty can get themselves in this kind of confused state, then what about kids who have already been confused by the Gender Cult with its fluent Genderish facing the extra 'confusion' of puberty?
To the activist types, a person always "knows" themselves better than anyone else - even very young kids, allegedly, do - and we **must** always believe them. But NLM's "gender journey" again puts the lie to this kind of affirmative lunacy. We don't always know best, even as adults.
As this excellent PITT article demonstrates, our bodies, not our minds, know best - and from the earliest age.
There was an article in "Scientific" America, that I wanted to respond to. I posted this as a comment on their Facebook page, but maybe there are better places for it.
Hello America, I have been following your conflict from the sideline online. You seem to have a problem. I see that parents feel betrayed when ideology steals their kids away and then castrated and mutilates them. You know, this may sound crazy, but unless you yourself put a major portion of your life into producing offspring, you probably forgot what it meant, to be a mother or a father. America, you split the world into camps. You limit the categories in which you think. Have you forgotten that love includes all? Listen to the parents. When they say that they feel like their children are being captured by a pseudocult, listen to them. Scientific America, listen to parents and don't fall for the bait. There is a real fear to acknowledge and it is not against you. Your fear is, that your bubble may burst, like the dinosaurs saw their world be extinguished when a foreign object hit the Earth. There is something similar going on. Why are parents often the last to know that their child is trans? How can it be that they seriously fear the institutions that are supposed to be on their side? How does it work, when you can apply a narrative to refute a claim, an ad hominem, like fear or conservative, in order to obliterate the need to just listen? This seems too much like puberty not to take it seriously. Puberty institutionalised. Be yourself, listen beyond the categories of good and evil. Have a heart and prevent your children from being chemically altered and castrated. Do not fool yourself out of fear of losing ground. Love is not a battlefield between parents and those who believe they know better. That is hell.
Good morning America, please wake up, please wake up!
I am afraid that TRAs will catch up and change the dictionary definition of puberty (like man and woman definitions). Currently the definition is "Puberty is the process of physical changes through which a child's body matures into an adult body CAPABLE OF SEXUAL REPRODUCTION." Which is quite literally the opposite of what happens in what TRAs call the "right puberty"...
Thanks for this. On a related note, we can't say often enough that the existing evidence does not support the theory of trans-identified kids or adults being "born in the wrong body".
Any attempt to show innateness of trans is fouled up by failing to control for sexual orientation. As this study shows, controlling for orientation produces results that show trans people as having sex-typical brains:
The link with sexual orientation was discovered by researchers most notably Ray Blanchard, who found that about half of of the trans-identifying people he studied were LGBs suffering from internalized homophobia, who were trying to trans the gay away:
This study showed that the available evidence indicates trans people with dementia tend to forget they are trans and revert to their original identities. It's not proof, but if trans was innate, we wouldn't expect that to happen:
“Born in the wrong body” and “go through the wrong puberty” are the two most asinine, useless phrases ever conceived, not just in the English language but in any language.
Where do you begin addressing these monstrous, ruinous memes? Well, you don’t. There is no argument to address that which is stone-cold stupid on its face, utterly insane. The only thing to do is to do away with the source, put an end to gender identity ideology and the hold it has on the deluded unfortunates in its ghoulish grasp.
We’ve come a long way since the uproar over North Carolina’s bathroom law, when the elites and their toadies - celebrities and woke corporations - surprised us with their indignant reaction to a state’s sensible law to ensure public bathroom privacy for the sexes, as well as safety for women and girls.
Now us rank and file citizens are hitting back hard for the sake of our children and their posterity, and there are 20 state laws, and growing, making it outright illegal to do unthinkable things to whole and healthy minors who must be left alone to go through their natural puberty on their way to becoming fully functional adults of the next generation who can then spawn the generation after them.
This is war for normal and sane. Just as the the Allies united to shut down the Third Reich (even though they would no doubt rather do just about anything else). They had no choice, it was thrust upon them. So it is upon us.
We didn’t ask for this, but we’re doing something about it, and having results. PITT is one way, and there are many others. People and parents are reaching out to each other, forming groups, and having effects towards the end of closing down the current threat. 20 laws and burgeoning to more. This is from you writing your elected officials and getting the results we see today. This is but the beginning of the beginning. Let’s press through until the end of the end - the undoing of the tyranny and malpractice.
We appear to have reached a point where unethical medical experimentation is no longer hidden in the shadows as it has been since the Nuremberg trials.
Several generations have passed and few seem to have become familiar with the history of scientific curiosity. Category error is no longer simply a convenient rhetorical device, it is instantiated within nearly all announcement and publication.
The category error I refer to is the conflation of "researcher" or "scientist" with "benevolent" and "healer."
There is an overwhelming amount of ignorance involved with this, and no small amount of appeal to emotion. Transhumanist researchers are human, and as such are emotional, but it is an error to assume that these experimenters are motivated by compassion for any individual.
They seek knowledge, and are agnostic as to how that knowledge is acquired. Our confused, self-loathing sufferers are excellent experimental subjects, and a great deal of knowledge is accruing as the result of the experiments being performed on them.
It is highly advisable to review the debates about Josef Mengele's experimental results, and the eventual outcome of those debates. The debates themselves appear to be now considered anachronisms, if what is happening to human experimental subjects today is any indication.
Recently, I had my mind utterly blown by the fact baby girls are already born with MILLIONS of eggs (now I'm pretty sure they're not able to be fertilized, but still). This just further said mind explosion. I guess the spike in testosterone/estrogen in the womb is what turns fetuses into boys or girls
A wonderfully informative essay. As a biological psychologist, I appreciated you including so many generally little known facts. In support of your overall thesis, I would add that (as you clearly know), it's even more complex and intricate than your (very good) overview suggests. And, every time I read a piece such as this, I am reminded of how little I know compared to the amount of information that is available, and is being discovered daily. It's astounding to me the degree to which the ideologues are fueled by intellectual hubris, and an ignorance (or fundamental misunderstanding) of biology. I commend you for taking the time and effort needed to present such an intriguing essay. I hope that it is widely read and appreciated. Sincerely, Frederick
In a perfect world, the ACLU's queer propagandist-in-chief, the female attorney posing as the trans gay male Chase Strangio, would be required to submit a written rebuttal of "There's no such thing as the wrong puberty."
Very interesting. Would be great to make this a mandatory assignment to be signed off by the head of the AMA before any doctor can practice medicine!
I've just read a piece from Quillette which discusses the case of Nathaniel Le May (NLM). This is a bit of a bizarre "edge case" that may not seem relevant to the central issues that PITT addresses, but it's one that exposes the limitations of the Gender Cult. We're all aware of "effeminate" men and so it's, perhaps, not too much of a stretch to go from there to the idea of someone being "born in the wrong body". We might find some degree of plausibility in the notion that a very effeminate man is, in some sense, "really" a woman.
Of course it's not plausible, and requires a confused mix-up of sex categories with (stereotypical) behaviours, feelings and personality, but we can at least see why such an idea gains some traction.
The case of NLM is especially interesting when it comes to the whole notion of "the wrong body" and things like "the wrong puberty". NLM identifies as something called Transmasculine Non-Binary. I'm not even going to try to translate this from the new language of Genderish into plain English.
NLM was born as a woman - we might mischievously suggest she was 'assigned' a vagina at birth - but at the grand old age of 41 has now decided that because of her 'gender' she requires the addition of a penis. Not **instead** of her original equipment, but as **as well as**. She is, of course, upset, that her demands for the installation of the new equipment weren't acceded to more quickly than they were. The Quillette article doesn't make it clear exactly where this new equipment is to be installed, but one can only hope it's not on her forehead.
Adopting terminology from trans lexicons, we might say she wants a bonus hole AND a bonus pole.
Was NLM born in the "wrong body"? Did she "suffer" the "wrong" puberty? If so, what on earth is the "right" body for such a person?
It is obvious that NLM is confused and probably mentally unwell and caught in the grip of a deranged ideology. At 41 we, perhaps, think she ought to know better. But if even adults who have gone through puberty can get themselves in this kind of confused state, then what about kids who have already been confused by the Gender Cult with its fluent Genderish facing the extra 'confusion' of puberty?
To the activist types, a person always "knows" themselves better than anyone else - even very young kids, allegedly, do - and we **must** always believe them. But NLM's "gender journey" again puts the lie to this kind of affirmative lunacy. We don't always know best, even as adults.
As this excellent PITT article demonstrates, our bodies, not our minds, know best - and from the earliest age.
There was an article in "Scientific" America, that I wanted to respond to. I posted this as a comment on their Facebook page, but maybe there are better places for it.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php/?id=100059648433912&story_fbid=697113288953613
Hello America, I have been following your conflict from the sideline online. You seem to have a problem. I see that parents feel betrayed when ideology steals their kids away and then castrated and mutilates them. You know, this may sound crazy, but unless you yourself put a major portion of your life into producing offspring, you probably forgot what it meant, to be a mother or a father. America, you split the world into camps. You limit the categories in which you think. Have you forgotten that love includes all? Listen to the parents. When they say that they feel like their children are being captured by a pseudocult, listen to them. Scientific America, listen to parents and don't fall for the bait. There is a real fear to acknowledge and it is not against you. Your fear is, that your bubble may burst, like the dinosaurs saw their world be extinguished when a foreign object hit the Earth. There is something similar going on. Why are parents often the last to know that their child is trans? How can it be that they seriously fear the institutions that are supposed to be on their side? How does it work, when you can apply a narrative to refute a claim, an ad hominem, like fear or conservative, in order to obliterate the need to just listen? This seems too much like puberty not to take it seriously. Puberty institutionalised. Be yourself, listen beyond the categories of good and evil. Have a heart and prevent your children from being chemically altered and castrated. Do not fool yourself out of fear of losing ground. Love is not a battlefield between parents and those who believe they know better. That is hell.
Good morning America, please wake up, please wake up!
I am afraid that TRAs will catch up and change the dictionary definition of puberty (like man and woman definitions). Currently the definition is "Puberty is the process of physical changes through which a child's body matures into an adult body CAPABLE OF SEXUAL REPRODUCTION." Which is quite literally the opposite of what happens in what TRAs call the "right puberty"...
Wonderfully written and enormously informative.
So where can I buy some of this Follicle Stimulating Hormone? But seriously, thank you for writing this. It's very interesting.
Thanks for this. On a related note, we can't say often enough that the existing evidence does not support the theory of trans-identified kids or adults being "born in the wrong body".
Any attempt to show innateness of trans is fouled up by failing to control for sexual orientation. As this study shows, controlling for orientation produces results that show trans people as having sex-typical brains:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-17352-8
The link with sexual orientation was discovered by researchers most notably Ray Blanchard, who found that about half of of the trans-identifying people he studied were LGBs suffering from internalized homophobia, who were trying to trans the gay away:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanchard%27s_transsexualism_typology
This study showed that the available evidence indicates trans people with dementia tend to forget they are trans and revert to their original identities. It's not proof, but if trans was innate, we wouldn't expect that to happen:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1363460719876835
https://fb.me/e/94NljobAM
https://www.facebook.com/VancouverIsland1millionmarch4children We are marching this is Vancouver Island. Sign up for the event and please try and get Canada some exposure somehow.
“Born in the wrong body” and “go through the wrong puberty” are the two most asinine, useless phrases ever conceived, not just in the English language but in any language.
Where do you begin addressing these monstrous, ruinous memes? Well, you don’t. There is no argument to address that which is stone-cold stupid on its face, utterly insane. The only thing to do is to do away with the source, put an end to gender identity ideology and the hold it has on the deluded unfortunates in its ghoulish grasp.
We’ve come a long way since the uproar over North Carolina’s bathroom law, when the elites and their toadies - celebrities and woke corporations - surprised us with their indignant reaction to a state’s sensible law to ensure public bathroom privacy for the sexes, as well as safety for women and girls.
Now us rank and file citizens are hitting back hard for the sake of our children and their posterity, and there are 20 state laws, and growing, making it outright illegal to do unthinkable things to whole and healthy minors who must be left alone to go through their natural puberty on their way to becoming fully functional adults of the next generation who can then spawn the generation after them.
This is war for normal and sane. Just as the the Allies united to shut down the Third Reich (even though they would no doubt rather do just about anything else). They had no choice, it was thrust upon them. So it is upon us.
We didn’t ask for this, but we’re doing something about it, and having results. PITT is one way, and there are many others. People and parents are reaching out to each other, forming groups, and having effects towards the end of closing down the current threat. 20 laws and burgeoning to more. This is from you writing your elected officials and getting the results we see today. This is but the beginning of the beginning. Let’s press through until the end of the end - the undoing of the tyranny and malpractice.
My mom, aged 80, has always said she can tell a boy baby from a girl by scent. Go Mom! My guess is she's not the only elder with that learned wisdom.
We appear to have reached a point where unethical medical experimentation is no longer hidden in the shadows as it has been since the Nuremberg trials.
Several generations have passed and few seem to have become familiar with the history of scientific curiosity. Category error is no longer simply a convenient rhetorical device, it is instantiated within nearly all announcement and publication.
The category error I refer to is the conflation of "researcher" or "scientist" with "benevolent" and "healer."
There is an overwhelming amount of ignorance involved with this, and no small amount of appeal to emotion. Transhumanist researchers are human, and as such are emotional, but it is an error to assume that these experimenters are motivated by compassion for any individual.
They seek knowledge, and are agnostic as to how that knowledge is acquired. Our confused, self-loathing sufferers are excellent experimental subjects, and a great deal of knowledge is accruing as the result of the experiments being performed on them.
It is highly advisable to review the debates about Josef Mengele's experimental results, and the eventual outcome of those debates. The debates themselves appear to be now considered anachronisms, if what is happening to human experimental subjects today is any indication.
Thank you so much for this information. It really does provide foundational evidence that can be passed on.
As commented elsewhere, a great shame that in today's world the writer has to remain in hiding.
Recently, I had my mind utterly blown by the fact baby girls are already born with MILLIONS of eggs (now I'm pretty sure they're not able to be fertilized, but still). This just further said mind explosion. I guess the spike in testosterone/estrogen in the womb is what turns fetuses into boys or girls
A wonderfully informative essay. As a biological psychologist, I appreciated you including so many generally little known facts. In support of your overall thesis, I would add that (as you clearly know), it's even more complex and intricate than your (very good) overview suggests. And, every time I read a piece such as this, I am reminded of how little I know compared to the amount of information that is available, and is being discovered daily. It's astounding to me the degree to which the ideologues are fueled by intellectual hubris, and an ignorance (or fundamental misunderstanding) of biology. I commend you for taking the time and effort needed to present such an intriguing essay. I hope that it is widely read and appreciated. Sincerely, Frederick
One has to wonder whether the endocrinologists supporting the cult are aware of these basic differences.
In a perfect world, the ACLU's queer propagandist-in-chief, the female attorney posing as the trans gay male Chase Strangio, would be required to submit a written rebuttal of "There's no such thing as the wrong puberty."