By now it should be obvious that TED exists to give me blog material. They scour the earth looking for pseudo-intellectual airheads to prattle on about nonsense to the applause of barking seals in the audience. This time they found a tranny to say insane things for our entertainment.
I was assigned boy at birth based on the appearance of my genitalia. I remember when I was five years old in the Philippines walking around our house, I would always wear this t-shirt on my head. And my mom asked me, “How come you always wear that t-shirt on your head?” I said, “Mom, this is my hair. I’m a girl.” I knew then how to self-identify.
No, you were not “assigned” anything. Biology is not arbitrary. Your genetics make you a boy or a girl. You were born a boy and you remain a boy. You have chosen to mutilate yourself and dress up like a girl or you may have a mental disease. Either way, you are what your DNA says you are.
Gender has always been considered a fact, immutable, but we now know it’s actually more fluid, complex and mysterious. Because of my success, I never had the courage to share my story, not because I thought what I am is wrong, but because of how the world treats those of us who wish to break free. Every day, I am so grateful because I am a woman. I have a mom and dad and family who accepted me for who I am. Many are not so fortunate.
Humans do not have “gender” they have a sex, male or female. There’s never been anything mysterious about it because up until recent, we have not let crazy people rant like this in public.
There are people who swear they are animals or invisible. Are we supposed to pretend they are these things? Are we going to be required to say that Fred down the block is a giant gopher because Fred now identifies as a gopher?
A big theme of mine is how modern capitalism is all about socializing costs and privatizing profits. There’s a bit of that with the various crotch warriors and deviants. The cost of these delusions is forced onto the rest of us. That way Fred get to pretend to be a giant gopher without suffering the consequences for it.
Now matter how far you spread the costs, they never go away. They are always there. Even a rich society like ours can indulge in a limited amount of madness. Forcing the rest of us to go along with this poor persons madness is pushing those limits. Instead of maybe finding a medical solution to these delusions, we are hobbling the normal functioning of society to accommodate them.
The scary part of all this is the success The Cult has had in indoctrinating a surprising number of those barking seals……
A sampling of comments. 90% are like this————–
–This was one of the most beautiful talks I’ve ever heard
–I have only recently seen your brilliant, brave, intelligent, and humble presentation and feel motivated to comment
–I think it is one of the most impressive talk in TED I’ve ever seen
–This is one of the most powerful TED Talks that I’ve seen
–I have so much respect for her!
–Have watched many TED talks have never been so moved as to go look up my password to log in and post comment till now.
–A truly remarkable, brave and honest speech
And if we wanted to get all “coo”-ey about it, our responses to posts on this site would sound similar. There is something about the self-sorting that goes on, in the Internet, that is probably worthy of some serious study and understanding. Venus and Mars, Betty or Veronica, people’s world views seem to perhaps be pre-ordained or somehow learned early in life (nature or nurture?). I want to believe that my views, which closely align with those of the blogger and most of the commenters here, are true and right and noble. So far, I have no reason to doubt it. I also want to believe that the silly TED commenters have failed to examine their own gullibility and naïveté, but I am not so sure. Somehow, they, too, must have reconciled their enthusiasms with some sort of world-view that makes logical sense to them. Otherwise, we have millions of people operating in a delusional twilight zone. I will give them the benefit of the doubt, that they do have some sort of rational world-view. But I do not believe that it is one that correctly takes into account human nature, mankind’s baked-in failings, and a healthy culture’s need to aspire to great things.
It sounds loony but as a young parent I must remain open minded because what if my son (fill in the blank)
If you son is gay, he is gay. The evidence all points to a biological cause. It does not make him something other than male. This is biology and it is not negotiable. Humans come in one of two sexes. That’s it.
What freaks me out is that there are a fair number of people with this exact delusion. It appears that some of them may develop it as children or teens. Sure, they’re crazy — but that doesn’t solve the problem.
I don’t know how much to trust the claims that the kids go apeshit if told that they’re not really girls.
Why? Estrogen in the water? Cosmic rays? WTF is going on here? This didn’t happen in the 70s. Not with little kids. Some middle aged fruits like Walter Carlos, yeah, but not little kids.
It would be nice if we could try to figure this out, but who would fund such a thing?
I knew someone who liked to dress in female clothes. He was, as nature turns out, able to have kids and indeed had several, all of whom as far as I could see back then turned out quite okay.
I am intrigued by this sort of thing because having worked with him, I have a small idea of the view ‘from the other side.’ When he finally (alcohol induced) ‘confessed’ to dressing in female clothes, he was equally adamant he was a man. He would, in his terms, ‘bang a woman hard’ (bang as in male-female coupling, not fists) and played sports of various kinds, and not because he wanted to see other men naked. He was, he maintained, not the least interested in observing the male physique in the showers after the game, but he simply had this thing about female clothes. But, there is always but. While he did it privately he said he knew he looked slightly ridiculous: he said while his legs were okay he still was a man, and men have certain characteristics such as the shape of the lower forehead and a prominent adam’s apple, that said, hey I am male. Plus, he found it hard to get clothes that fitted him in his pseudo role-play. Men have a different body shape and mass to women, and no amount of makeup ever hides that.
This guy said, for what it is worth, his wife knew (I have no idea if this is true) but she wouldn’t talk about it. I have no idea why he confessed to me, drunk or not, but eventually our career paths diverged and I lost contact with him.
I suspect that if I could talk to him today he would be horrified about this ‘ooh look, I’m really a girl’ routine. He insisted he was all male, but liked the feel of women’s clothes. I certainly don’t think ‘changing gender’ or relabelling himself would be his cup of tea. As an aside, as man he wasn’t particularly female looking, so I doubt if anyone who saw him on the street in a frock would think anything but, dear God, what a horrific sight…
But we live in interesting times, it would seem.
There’s a difference between getting aroused by wearing women’s clothes and thinking you are a woman trapped in a man’s body. You can count me down as one who is fine with you doing whatever it is you think you need to do in the privacy of your own home. Just keep it out of the streets. The Vikings had it right in this regard. They had a term for private cult and a term for public cult. There were customs, beliefs and so forth that were done in common. Then there were customs and beliefs that were done in private. A strong prohibition between one overlapping the other strikes the balance.
When some unfortunate soul is trotted out by people who should know better and we are required to pretend they are invisible, of a third sex or the issue of alien-human coitus, the private is now being inflicted on the public.