Jan Morris and Conundrum
The name of Jan Morris came up in yesterdays trans thread. For example, commenter “PA Cat” wrote this:
Jan Morris (born James Morris; served in the British Army in the last years of WWII, and was the journalist who accompanied Edmund Hillary’s 1953 Everest expedition) transitioned as an adult in 1964. He had already married and had five children by the time he became a transwoman. I read Morris’ book Conundrum, in which s/he did not try to explain why s/he transitioned, only stated, “I was three or perhaps four years old when I realized that I had been born into the wrong body, and should really be a girl. I remember the moment well, and it is the earliest memory of my life.” What struck me, however, is the section of the book in which Morris recounts returning from gender reassignment surgery in Morocco in 1972, starting to live openly as a woman, and being shocked to discover how rude and condescending many men are to women. IOW, Morris no longer appeared as a man (army officer, at that) among men, and found that she felt vulnerable in a way that she never had before.
And commenter “Art Deco” responded by quoting that next to last sentence of PA Cat’s about Morris’s shock, and added “Non ci credo” – which means something on the order of “I don’t believe it.”
I had read Morris’ book Conundrum back in 1974 when it came out, and I remember it. Not well, actually, and not in detail, but I remember the impression Morris gave back in the days when trans people were less commonly encountered and someone who had had the surgery was fairly rare. Morris became something of a celebrity because as a man – James Morris – he had already been a fairly well-known writer, and because (as PA Cat describes) he had done some stereotypically masculine things and had looked like a fairly rugged and athletic specimen of manhood. Those characteristics, in addition to the fact that the transition occurred well into adulthood – Morris was happily married and had five children at the time – made for quite a bit of media coverage when James became Jan. The adult transition and the relative ruggedness also meant that as a woman Morris didn’t “read” as especially feminine.
My recollection of Jan Morris (I had previously never heard of James) was that she was an unusually good-natured person. I’d describe her as quite jolly, in a Mrs.Doubtfire-ish sort of way. Her book revealed her to be a good writer – that was no surprise – and her transition story was similar to that of other trans people of the time in one way: it featured a very very early and unshakeable conviction of being a girl rather than a boy.
I did a little searching and discovered that she lived to be 94 and died about a year ago. I also managed to locate a relevant excerpt from her book, and refreshed my memory by reading it. It’s got none of the political message of today and none of the rancor. Morris has what I think is a unique story and a unique sensibility.
Here are some quotes:
I have tried to analyse my own childish emotions to discover what I meant when I declared myself to be a girl.
What was my reasoning? Where was my evidence? But it remains a riddle. So be it.
To me, gender is not physical at all but altogether insubstantial. It is soul, perhaps; it is how one feels, it is light and shade, it is inner music. It is the essentialness of oneself.
Transsexualism is not a sexual mode or preference. It is not an act of sex at all. It is a passionate, lifelong, ineradicable conviction.
At nine, I joined the choir school of Christ Church, Oxford. The school itself was sensible and un-hearty.
Each day, a moment of silence followed the words of the Grace.
Into that hiatus, I inserted silently every night, year after year, an appeal no less heartfelt: ‘And please God let me be a girl. Amen.’
Jan Morris speaks only for herself; her story is her story alone, and she was an unusual person in more ways than the trans part of her. For example, the impression I get from the article is that she was asexual and remained so, although love and the desire for children allowed her to have sex with her wife as a man.
So after her surgery she didn’t seem in any sense at all to have missed what had been removed.
In a passage relevant to the question of how she perceived herself to be treated as a woman, Morris wrote this, and as you read it be aware that even after her surgery Morris really didn’t look very convincing as a woman:
Fortunately, the first society into which I ventured frankly and publicly sex-changed was the profoundly civilised society of Caernarfonshire. My neighbours greeted my moment of metamorphosis with an urbane insouciance.
Some could not restrain a kind of gasp, instantly stifled. Some tactfully said how well I looked that morning. But most simply pretended not to notice.
Elsewhere in the world, the impact was more abrupt.
The very tone of voice in which I was now addressed, the very posture of the person next in the queue, the very feel in the air when I entered a room, constantly emphasised my change of status.
Thrust as I now found myself far more into the company of women, I began to find women’s conversation in general more congenial.
Men treated me more and more as a junior — my lawyer, in an unguarded moment, even called me ‘my child’.
I discovered that, even now, men prefer women to be less informed, less able, less talkative and certainly less self-centred than they are themselves.
The subtle subjection of women was catching up on me.
It was, of course, by no means all unpleasant. If the condescension of men could be infuriating, the courtesies were very welcome. And people are usually far kinder to women.
So Morris saw the reactions of others as a mixed bag, and she was well aware – and seemingly accepting – of the fact that she didn’t look all that much like a person who’d been born female. Her good nature seems to have lasted throughout her long life, although she remained as she titled her book: a conundrum.
[NOTE: Nowadays, trans people can avail themselves of more varied ways of changing their external characteristics, and cosmetic surgery is often part of it. There are trans models, for example, who look like stunning women (albeit like women who are models, hardly typical females in the first place).]
Jan Morris was a fascinating person indeed, extremely well-travelled and exceptionally talented as a writer in various genres. Anyone with even the slightest curiosity about the history of the British Empire should read the splendid trilogy entitled Pax Britannica; as a popular literary treatment of the topic it has never been bettered, and the prose is truly superb and beautifully evocative.
Looking back on Jan Morris’s comments about men and women, I think her experiences were shaped by her Britishness (FWIW, she always identified as Welsh, not English, and considered herself a Welsh republican; her poet/musician son is named Twm Morys, which I assume is a Welsh translation of Tom Morris). If you look at a certain type of upper-class Englishman from the Duke of Wellington down through Henry Higgins, there is obvious condescension toward anyone considered inferior beneath a veneer of politeness.
Take another UK writer of Morris’ generation: P.D. James’ murder mysteries typically contain some shrewd insights into male/female relationships on all the class levels of British society. As James worked for the NHS and the Home Office during her writing career from the 1940s onward, she became intimately familiar with the workings of government bureaucracies in the UK and how they affect relations between men and women. James knew what Morris meant about male condescension– which was often reinforced in British society by class and educational differences. James herself never went to university; she had to leave school at 16– and some of her superiors in the NHS looked down on her for that reason. It’s hard for many Americans to pick up on the subtleties of educational differentials in the UK– the closest thing we have is the snobbery traditionally associated with the Ivy League.
Trans-sexuality is a pretty rare (fortunately) mental disorder. Many, when young and basically ignorant, wonder what it’s like to be the opposite sex, but time marches on, they mature, and they learn who they are by biological mechanisms such as erections and menopause.
Now, like homosexuals before them, instead of previously being defined as disorders in the psychiatric DSM, have become sacred cows.
You may not like your body but it is the only one you will ever have. My son ended up short because his mother was, but did I seek growth hormone for him? No. Is that administered to kids who want to be better basketball players? Not by any ethical doc.
There is a lot of self-pity in Neo’s quotes of Morris.
Fascinating!
Anyone interested in this topic will likely find Blaire White interesting. She has her own podcast, or you can hear her on others. A search of her name will likely turn up a lot of options. She was (is?) a petite man before undergoing her change, so she looks quite believable as a woman. I doubt I’d suspect she was born otherwise if I met her without knowing of her history.
What I like about listening to her is she is extremely open and honest, including a willingness to suspect her own motives and reasoning. I believe she bills herself as “Conservative” although I don’t get the sense politics is her passion. She is not a fan of feminism and is a vocal, free speech advocate. A very interesting person.
Notice that he says, when he “realized”, and not when he “became convinced” that he was a girl. Begs the question rather neatly, doesn’t it.
And of course no explanation of how he knew he was a girl is required, since it is not conceptually possible. This bit of performative nonsense, actually makes a kind of twisted tactical sense ( i.e., is readily explicable) since he obviously, and admittedly, knew nothing of what it was like to be the real girl he claimed he was. He was instead imagining that he was something which he in fact knew nothing about.
Therefore, he was imagining not what he claimed to be imagining – the status and nature of the term “girl” as understood and employed by objective parties – but some probably inchoate subjective fantasy end which he labeled “being a girl” .
Calling it a dissociatuve reaction may be simplistic, but aims, I think, in the right direction.
It’s also, and obviously, a social thing for these people. They are craving a certain kind of social validation or of exemption from others; which they figure, they can only get by being someone different. And in fact someone with a different sexual identity altogether.
The social psychosis drill is that they mysteriously “know”; and therefore, you are to affirm the performance. Everyone has their socially assigned role. Assigned that is by the craziest among ,”us”: Either as a privileged performer, or as applauding spectator and enabler of the farce and intellectual FRAUD.
As religious and moral inhibitions sadly fade away, one unanticipated benefit might be that gene therapy and therapeutic abortion will be brought more readily to bear on the annoyance, and thus, possibly, make this a non-problem in the future.
Insofar, that is, as it is not merely a psychological disorder rooted in the behavior of the parents themselves.
PA+Cat,
“It’s hard for many Americans to pick up on the subtleties of educational differentials in the UK.”
I’ve worked in the UK and it was not hard at all to pick up on their snobbery on how they look down on Americans. Nothing subtle about it.
Nora Ephron wrote a scathing review of “Conundrum” back in 1974. It’s available in a number of Ephron’s anthologies – I couldn’t find the complete review online – but it’s worth reading it in print for those who still patronize public libraries.
RTF–
Absolutely. I should, however, have clarified that I meant educational snobbery among the British themselves (Oxbridge vs. the Redbricks, etc.). I knew some British students in grad school who said that they thought that the wide variety of American colleges and universities (the Ivies, the small liberal arts colleges, the large public universities, the military academies, the institutes of technology, etc.) was much better than the British two-universities-and-all-the-others pattern, because it made room for many different types of students.
Apropos of anti-Americanism, one reason I found P.D. James’ murder mysteries so– likable– is that she never displayed that anti-American snobbery. In fact, there is a scene in one of her mystery novels in which Adam Dalgleish, her senior detective, is staying at an English country inn, meets an American couple there, and shares a delightful dinner conversation with them. Another indication of her lack of snobbery toward Americans is that she has Dalgleish traveling to Quantico fairly often for one of the advanced seminars in forensics that the FBI offers to upper-level detectives from all major European countries– and he is always appreciative of American hospitality.
DNW,
“of course no explanation of how he knew he was a girl is required, since it is not conceptually possible.
I suspect Morris is refering to a powerful and consistent ‘inner certainty’. Have you never had one?
Consider this hypothesis; we live multiple lives and some of us get so fixated upon being one sex that a life in which we manifest as the biological sex we disidentify with is necessary to bring about a rebalancing. Balance being necessary to the integration of the soul’s experiences in living multiple lives on life’s stage.
“”All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts..”
Another interesting take on the different reactions to someone presenting as a member of the opposite sex than the one they were can be found in “Self-Made Man: One Woman’s Year Disguised as a Man” by Norah Vincent (2006). Vincent is a lesbian, not “trans”, but as an experiment she disguised herself and passed as male in a variety of contexts including a sales team, a religious retreat and a bowling team. One reaction she got that both surprised and annoyed her was how instead of being regarded as woman who was a tough dyke (and who might well punch out someone who looked at her funny) when she presented as a man, other men regarded her as weakly and effeminate and certainly no threat. Of course, this is a demonstration of how all things are relative: as a woman she looked tough and potentially aggressive. As a man…not so much.
What a fascinating person! That took real conviction to live like that, especially given that she was previously so high profile. Stories like this tend to reinforce that trans is a real thing but also that it’s a real unusual thing which is being exploited to maim the vulnerable, adult and child, in the name of politics because the Dems are running out of gullible interest groups and credible causes.
other men regarded her as weakly and effeminate and certainly no threat.
Bowling. Religious retreats.
I’m not sure that I even know what that means; unless it means an absolute conviction regarding some state of affairs or matter of fact. But then, if it referred to an exterior state of affairs that was subject to some form of objective verification, it would probably not be what you mean by an “inner certainty”.
On the other hand if by “inner certainty” you mean the feeling experienced, say, during a 10 year old’s squirming reluctance to be hugged by the sweating fat woman, or a lack of any desire to play with dolls – other than to possibly obtain examples in order blow them up with firecrackers – then I guess , maybe, sorta. Maybe.
I don’t understand what it is you are saying here.
There is a common phrase of derision that used to have some currency during my parents’ era: “He’s just playing a role”
It was considered a kind of fakery. This does not mean that you cannot ride herd on cattle and learn carpentry skills as well. It just means that in order to be real, you have to actually be able to perform the tasks you pretend to, if you are to be accounted as honest.
Draping one’s self in a paint-stained smock and donning a beret, does not an artist make.
On the other hand, there is that old joke about two guys talking. One whines to the other. “I have spent years painting scenes on canvas and it has never earned me any respect. No one has ever labeled me as an “artist’. But now look at me! Suck just one …. “
Sex is male and female. Gender is masculine and feminine, sex-correlated physical and mental attributes. Trans refers to a state or process of divergence. The transgender spectrum includes homosexuals, bisexuals, neo-genders, intersexuals, etc. Transvestites are trans-social. Clothing is prescribed by society to normalize a favorable juxtaposition of the sexes. It was John Hopkins that studied gender dysphoria, and concluded that most individuals affected will either evolve out of their confused state, or be materially harmed through surgical, medical, and psychiatric corruption. Homosexuals were determined to have a stable state, where individuals exist independently, and as couplets exhibit a masculine and feminine dichotomy (bias). The pride parades (less the lions) are a form of mass indoctrination to normalize a dysfunctional (trans) state.
Another example, A. E. Brain. She is genetically anomalous (3BHSD form of CAH), was convinced as a child that she was a girl in a boys body, spontaneously developed breasts as a married adult, and eventually made the transition.
If they were left in peace, there wouldn’t be that many trans people.
Jan Morris lived in peace for the rest of her/his life, but what about the wife and five children?
Stories like this tend to reinforce that trans is a real thing
???
@DNW:
“And of course no explanation of how he knew he was a girl is required, since it is not conceptually possible.”
Possibly related: For decades I’ve been told ‘you have no idea what it’s like to be a woman’. True*. So how does someone come to the conclusion that he is a she? Do trans folk have some ability to ‘know’ both sexes? If so, they should make outstanding marriage counselors.
*I have no idea what it’s like to be a woman. True, but I also have no idea what it’s like to be the guy next door. So?
The famous economist Deirdre Nansen McCloskey also transitioned.
I disagree with Cicero above. It is certainly rare, but that does NOT make it a ‘mental disorder’.
Just because something is strange or incomprehensible does not mean it’s wrong.
Quantum Mechanics anyone? Supposedly only 6 humans understand it.
I read Conundrum back in the early 80s as I tried to work out how to deal with transition. The things she said resonated deeply. And her post-lude, gave me hope that the consequences of my choices were going to be happily, liveable.
As to the family, if I recall, she remained part of her children’s adult lives and a friend to her ex-wife.
To DNW:
Your inability to understand is rooted in your lack of conceptual context – you never (most likely) questioned your own perceptions of the world and the ‘truth’ of your own self-awareness. Congrats….you’re like 99.5% of the population that never had a reason to do so.
When you are faced with incongruence, when how you perceive the world is CLEARLY different than how ‘reality’ and the rest of society around you seems to believe, you question your sanity. You question your perceptions. You question everything about yourself. And for most of us transsexuals, that questioning is going on DURING PUBERTY…initially. (Prior to that we are just trying to deal with it.) The absolute worst time for that lack of trust in yourself.
But, for some of us, it helps us to question what others don’t in the society around us. That is how society changes it’s status quo.
Jan Morris helped a generation better understand ourselves and gave us hope we could survive, and thrive, post-op.
Kate–
I hope this info. helps: one of the five children died in infancy, but the other four seem to have taken their father’s transition in stride. One son, Twm Morys, is a noted musician and poet who prefers to write in Welsh. There are two other sons, Henry Morris and Mark Morris, and a daughter, Suki Morus [I don’t know why the daughter spells her last name that way].
Jan’s wife Elizabeth was supportive of the transition. According to the BBC, “Morris had a high public profile and the publicity that surrounded her decision was stressful. As same-sex marriages were not then possible, they were required to get divorced. But as a family, they stayed together and remained tight-knit.” Jan and Elizabeth were still living together in North Wales when Jan died. They had been able to form a civil partnership in 2008. Elizabeth is suffering from dementia but as far as I know, is still living. The BBC notes that they were prepared for death: “As a writer, Jan had chosen the words for their eventual headstone with some care. ‘Here are two friends,’ it will say, ‘at the end of one life.'”
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-26924906
The daughter of an old friend (USN squadron mate) had transition surgery after many years of angst. My friend had a very difficult time accepting it, but finally acquiesced. His wife was more accepting.
Reports were that the surgery was successful and the newly created male was making a good life. The father died relatively young, and we lost touch so I have no idea how it worked in the longer term.
This was long before the current fad; so it was a very personal decision after extended consideration Since the father and daughter were close, and he had difficulty with the decision; I assume the that the lead in to the act was very intense.
This has convinced me that there are situations that justify extreme action. It does nothing to put me on board with the current hysteria; and particularly not the campaign to push very young children into such a momentous decision. I may be mistaken but I have the sense that the current fad is to push little boys in the opposite direction. Color me paranoid, but I see that as the most visible manifestation of society’s current war against men.
DNW,
By “inner certainty” I mean a deep inner conviction, one in which the mind and emotions are in full alignment, such that there is complete harmony between them on that issue. Some people may categorize that as a soul at peace with itself on that issue or area.
Re: the hypothesis I offered in which you replied; “I don’t understand what it is you are saying here.”
I reread it and off the top of my head, I can’t think of how to express it more clearly. Which I see as fairly straightforward. Perhaps if you reflect upon it a bit, a clearer understanding will emerge.
Ah, here’s a clue, outstanding basketball dribblers can do so with either hand, in fact it’s a necessity at higher levels, especially for the guards.
Think of someone so focused into their preferred sex that they become unbalanced, lacking either the compassion typically associated with the “fairer sex” or the decisiveness we expect from males in a position of leadership. If we do live multiple lives, then a ‘corrective’ for that imbalance might well be to live a life or two of the sex in which we have become unbalanced. The goal and purpose being to regain balance. That presupposes that a healthy soul is an integrated and balanced soul. Obviously, it also presupposes that we have a soul:-)
In the Shakespeare quote, I was alluding to the idea that it could be applied to the hypothesis I offered. “All the world’s a stage” our brief lives acted out in this physical universe, we all having our “exits and entrances” and in our times we play “many parts” i.e. multiple lifetimes?
Heres a thought; any particular historical time, place or culture which holds an inordinate amount of interest for us might be one of our particularly noteworthy lives.
Strange case, the late Jan Morris. But an edge case. I could point you at fervent Jacobites in the year 2021 cf. her Welsh Nationalism. It’s a funny old world and there are still a few quirky erudite eccentrics in it. GloboHomo will homogenize everything soon, so enjoy them while you still can.
It is one thing for a society to tolerate and even quietly and locally accommodate with warmth the relatively rare Human Corner Cases.
It is entirely another thing to celebrate them and encourage recruitment of more of them.
There’s always been a tradition in SE Asia that if you woke up one morning and decided that you wanted to become a girl… well OK then.. Go off and dress like a a girl and act like a girl. No big deal. Mostly it’s just autogynephilia(*) mixed in with some cases likely from overuse of agricultural chemicals containing endocrine disrupters. But the idea that there would be a mass hysteria promoting the practice is unthinkable. This is Western late stage civilzational tertiary syphilis at work.
Generally in Asia you get strict Male/Female lesbian pairings. It’s kind of amusingly touchingly cute to see them going about… everything is hammed up just a bit past 12 on the dial. But no butch lesbian in Asia would be so stupid as to become an actual man.
* There are some very convincing transsexuals in (e.g.) Thailand… but can almost always spot them because they cannot control themselves in the way that local females are trained to from an early age…. Plus a woman generally does not get off on being a woman per se.. has to be man/men around to torment — see Cool Hand Luke hehe… The big bad dirty secret about the vast majority of male-female transsexuals is that it’s all autogynephilia… they’re in a state of constant arousal about ‘being a woman’ —> why they like to get in our faces if we relax our laws and social strictures.
One takeaway from the trans stories is that men and women are different, something I agree with. That contradicts the currently fashionable view that men and women are basically the same.
I don’t really understand what it means when you say to “question your own perceptions of the world, and the ‘truth’ of your own self-awareness”
I guess if you mean that I cannot question my perception of reality as one would, say in some phenomenological exercise, I’d have to deny it, saying, “been there done that”. But I don’t think you are talking about the transcendental reduction or even what the existence of dark matter might mean or not mean.
And, in another vein, I am also well aware of what it means to question the perceptions, the honesty, the transparency of motive, and even reality of the psychic lives and depths of consciousness (as opposed to the herd instinct and blind need to belong or be accepted) of others.
For example, I have no trouble imagining [some other] “people” as philosophical zombies [in that special meaning], or as quasi-automatons mindlessly following impulses [be they coherently directed or not] that well-up within a “them”; i.e., as their being not really much more than an epiphenomenal and semi-conscious skin sheath over the real thing that is doing all the driving.
But what it means to question the “truth” of one’s own self-awareness, seems to suggest that your own self-awareness as one subjectively experiences it, may somehow be the experience of the self-awareness of another … as if you are vicariously living through another mind without quite being certain of it.
If so, the question of even having an identity that means anything on a human level, as opposed to say, that hidden genome being the secret and real life of the entity as some might suppose, falls into meaninglessness, through incoherence.
Now, if you do in fact mean that; i.e., that our notion of ourselves as real selves is an illusion projected upon the conscious mind by a more sinister and fundamental entity which knows no conscience, then, I guess you have an idea that parallels both Freud and Nietzsche, but in rather updated terms.
But I don’t think that that is the notion which you intend to convey.
What that idea is, exactly, eludes me.
One thing that does strike me as I watch these various videos with so-called trans people is the extraordinary … “social sensitivity” one might call it, of these people. They seem to define themselves to a degree that I have difficulty comprehending as social beings with highly fluid boundaries.
The recent link to a trans … girl I guess … who was remarking on the phenomenal increase in lesbians seeking to present as men as a kind of “social contagion”, left me wondering just what the hell we were dealing with. She, or he, described whole households of lesbians who previously voiced hatred of men, falling like dominoes in a rush to have themselves surgically altered to pass as males. And then posting up pictures of their scared torsos, to the acclaim of others.
She or he, I am not sure which came first, then went on to begin some pseudo-philosophical anthropology blather chalking this gnat swarm behavior to the fact that we are herd animals or something. At which point, I tuned out.
It was too much for me to listen to someone crowingly apply a dehumanizing term to themselves, which I have provocatively applied to some classes of people in hopes of shocking them out of their mesmerized stupor.
Geez. Little did I suspect that calling a Borg and Borg, is not only not an insult, but an appellation totally congruent with their own analysis or self-perception.
If this understanding of theirs is taken to be true, I think we can forget once and for all about there being any such thing as “one humanity”; or, even about the possibility of there being any coherent notion of a “human being”. Much less then, might we take “human being” to be a term the bestowal of which, is capable of bearing any moral freight or implications.
This is nihilism. We can go there, I guess. But I don’t think that many of those doing the driving, will be very pleased when “we” [there being no real ‘we’ possible on this understanding] finally arrive.
Then all they should require is a bra, panties, a big tilting mirror, and some private place to lie down out in the wilderness .
They could then forego dragging all of the rest of us into their effen drama.
@DNW:
“They could then forego dragging all of the rest of us into their effen drama.”
And this, Children, is why those who claim that the State should have a monopoly on violence are Not Even Wrong.
@ Tuvea > “Quantum Mechanics anyone? Supposedly only 6 humans understand it.”
That many!!?
@ Chuck > “One takeaway from the trans stories is that men and women are different, something I agree with. That contradicts the currently fashionable view that men and women are basically the same.”
We aren’t supposed to notice that.
I’ve generally found amusing/questionable many claims that people thought they were a woman in a man’s body. It just seems odd in terms of hormonal balances, etc., that this occurs. It felt more as though they were gay but could not face that idea.
The one blatant exception, mind you (I’m sure there are others, not as well-known), is Barry aka Caroline aka Tula Cossey.
http://www.transviden.dk/caroline-cossey/
You can see from early pix that s/he was moderately female in body morphology, and, after transition, was sufficiently “female” that s/he became an extra in James Bond 007 Octopussy… aka, a “Bond Girl”.
S/he is 6′ tall and very slender, and no, on the surface, there is no indication s/he was born male. It would be… “odd” to know her, but I doubt if I’d have any issues with it.
There has, btw, been some very interesting SF written surrounding possible ways to approach this… Exchanging bodies a la Altered Carbon is one of the more obvious ones. I suspect that one would require considerable training for most, as female mannerisms vs. male mannerisms would hint at something hinky right off the bat.
One of the better examples of gender inversion I’ve ever seen pulled off was Enver Gjokaj (the last name is pronounced something like “Joke-eye”, as I recall) in the TV series Dollhouse. Early in the second season there is an ep with some rampant confusion among the dolls (very similar to Altered Carbon) and they wind up in the wrong bodies, and Enver is out on a dance floor pulling off the act of someone who thought they were a hot female. It’s both amusing and a good acting performance. And, while he’s not my type (being cis-het) he strikes me as pretty hunky if you like dark and mildly rugged types. And he’s got a twin brother… 🙂
}}} *I have no idea what it’s like to be a woman. True, but I also have no idea what it’s like to be the guy next door. So?
I believe the argument here would be that you have much more in common with the guy next door, through your base masculine experiences, than you do with the girl next door.
There does seem to be a modicum of reason in that assertion. It may not be universally valid (perhaps the guy next door is a closet Hannibal Lechter) but it is likely to be so across the main statistical universe.
As I commented above, if you were suddenly thrown into a body of the opposite sex, it would be pretty weird not just for you, but for anyone observing you, because of the massive disconnect between your mannerisms and those expected of your body.
E.G., men often swagger somewhat. Women rarely.
Another example would be the joke about Steven Segal running in his movies… “he runs like a girl”. Women do it the way they do because of the hip layout being more structured for carrying babies than running… but likely a man IN a woman would run very strangely, because Hse’d try and run like a man but the hip structure would be fighting them all the way.
}}} It is entirely another thing to celebrate them and encourage recruitment of more of them.
In fact, this is my main complaint with gays… They had every right to expect society to accept them**, but this has never been enough. They demand we celebrate their homosexuality with them, hence, “BAKE THE CAKE!! OR ELSE!!”
=====
** I find the way the Brits treated Alan Turing to be absolutely repulsive and totally unacceptable. The man was one of the most significant geniuses of our time, and a very significant reason we beat the Germans, and the Powers That Be knew this beyond a shadow of a doubt, but they still allowed the “less powerful types” to hound him to death for his sexual preferences. That’s just wrong.
Jan Morris, writes neo, “was an unusual person in more ways than the trans part of her. For example, the impression I get from the article is that she was asexual and remained so, although love and the desire for children allowed her to have sex with her wife as a man.” The paradox is much more intrinsic that those outside of this sub-cultural universe recognise.
Directly related to Jan Morris (whom I’ve enjoyably read), there is a profoundly important issue that stunned me upon reading an old neglected magazine on the political right in 2018. It concerns a trans community debate because transitioning normally causes the death of lust — the dimminishment or loss of libido,. (The long form piece I read about this was in 2018. It stunned me and was transfixed to my memory to the favorite cafe where I first read it. For years since, I’d thought it was “First Things” and authored by some man Arabic named; but despite these certainties and the fact that is was from 2015 or 2016, I’ve never been able to recover the reference. [I just did an archive dive at FR to recheck it. Not there.] I wish one of the two or three published trans movement critics would be summoned to speak on this very weird debate.)
I was stunned because the window into the socio-politics of the trans movement was so bizarrely different from anything else I knew about it and never before covered elsewhere, therefore I fully expected more on this psycho-culture Kampf to manifest in the years since then.
But as far as I can tell, the “death of desire debate, pro versus con,” has not resurfaced — until now, perhaps?
I refer people to this Wednesday post at Glenn at Instapundit: “TRANS TRANSITION PROBLEMS: ‘If you’ve never had an orgasm pre-surgery, and then your puberty’s blocked, it’s very difficult to achieve that afterwards… I consider that a big problem, actually.‘ SAME.”
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/478143/
At the root of this fad is unnaturally bizarre notions of what is means to be human. And embracing or fighting chemical castration (if I can correctly call it that), seems to mr to be anti-sex revolutionary.
The fact that no one can call a movement to fully account for its consequences is what is truely a marque of civilizational decline and degeneracy. I’m not just stunned — I’m alarmed.
Others marque this with the so-called modern death culture, the acceptance of easy suicide and abortion.
The other path resisting population and national decline is the pro-natalism seen in Poland and in Hungary, led by Victor Orban. https://www.bizpacreview.com/2021/10/07/exclusive-heres-why-hungary-is-incentivizing-marriage-and-having-children-1145414/
Let’s hear more of these voices. They speak to what is human about human nature. We need much more debate about this, not quiet kulture Kampfing cradle murder movements.
That contradicts the currently fashionable view that men and women are basically the same.
That was a fashionable view for about 15 years (1970-85). And it was and is only asserted in certain contingencies. Feminism is not a coherent body of thought, but an exercise in forensic and rhetorical gamesmanship. Rather like bad domestic arguments transferred to the public sphere.
Maybe some time in the future , scientists will locate bio-chemical markers or genetic anomalies that will explain or can predict which (or why certain) individuals are prone to gender disorder / confusion.
Though one’s upbringing may provide a partial explanation it’s tough to believe this. After all, if you take, say, 10000 kids all raised in similar settings (this is a thought experiment, so this experiment is possible) only X% of them will be gay and even a smaller percentage will ultimately become transgender.
So there has to be other factors that determine/influence gender identity outcomes.
Perhaps there is a wide spectrum of gender self – identities that has developed over the thousands of years of human evolution, just as some folks are tall, others not; some brown haired, few red-haired, etc.
Who knows?
It’s yet another mystery of the universe.
I have reread the initial quotes which Neo put up, several times now.
On each close reading they seem worse than before, more nonsensical, more self- contradictory, less substantial and less rooted in any kind of objective reality.
Especially egregious seems to be the notion of “gender” as he used it. It appears as a noun of some kind that denotes nothing definite or in particular, but instead refers to an inexplicable urge … I presume to present or be taken socially in some way.
Apparently, it is generated in part at least by a desire to be treated in some way in which the desiring one imagines the other sex is treated; or to experience the benefits or privileges which the dreamer imagines the other sex socially enjoys.
He says however that it is not sexual and has nothing to do with that. Yet he nonetheless prays to be ” a girl”, one of two sexes.
What was he really praying for? To wear a dress and to be treated indulgently?
What else could it be?
It is obvious from this and other readings that trans sexuals don’t really know the reality of the other sex as it is lived. Nor do they understand the way gender roles are actually lived out in terms of male female social relations.
Yet, they claim to be somehow certain that that is not only what they want, but ARE.
But they are obviously neither what they claim to be externally, nor do they even understand the reality of what they are asserting as their identity, internally.
The claim and assertion is therefore pure nonsense.
I will leave to psychologists just what the impulse is or how it originates.
But we can easily see how the initial unreality spreads as it mutates into 64 varieties of “gender”. Since it is definitional nonsense in the first place, the meaning of the supposed concept cannot therefore be contained within a definitional circle of real and objective referents.
Except in the case of those unfortunate genetic mutants of some kind, the whole thing is just unreality spun by psychologically troubled people.
Now, does that mental problem derive from a brain defect, or brain damage, or a gene expression problem? Possibly. Maybe even probably. But it does not make a boy a girl or a girl a boy. Nor does it make it reasonable for such persons to demand that the social world reorder itself to accommodate or validate such grotesque pretense and mimicry.
DNW:
And yet, funny thing, Morris – as both James Morris and Jan Morris – was most of the time a very happy person, with a very full and productive work life, a very happy marriage, and good relations with his/her many children.
This is a note for TJ, who said @ 6:19 a.m. that he’s looking for an article he hasn’t yet located: “It concerns a trans community debate because transitioning normally causes the death of lust — the diminishment or loss of libido,. (The long form piece I read about this was in 2018. It stunned me and was transfixed to my memory to the favorite cafe where I first read it. For years since, I’d thought it was “First Things” and authored by some man Arabic named; but despite these certainties and the fact that is was from 2015 or 2016, I’ve never been able to recover the reference.”
I think the author that TJ is looking for is Sohrab Ahmari, who is Iranian by birth. He did publish an article on the transgender movement in First Things in December 2019, which can be read here:
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2019/12/our-integral-regime
However, I think the specific article that TJ is seeking was published by Ahmari in Commentary in April 2018. It was titled “The Disappearance of Desire.” The publication details are here: Commentary. April, 2018, Vol. 145 Issue 4, p 15, 7 p. I can’t either view or download it because I don’t have access to the stanford.edu website. However, there is a podcast on the Tikvah Center website in which Ahmari discusses sex, gender, and the transgender movement:
https://tikvahfund.org/library/podcast-sohrab-ahmari-sex-desire-transgender-movement/
I hope this info. is helpful– I know how frustrating it can be to try to locate a favorite journal article and run into dead ends.
@ Neo,
That could be said for a great many people good and bad, in touch with reality, or not.
Though he might successfully, more or less, have adjusted the world around him, and through surgical mutilation, his own body, to his delusion, one thing he could not do was to explain to himself or to anyone else just what it meant when he said he wanted to be a girl.
He was not a girl of course. He never actually became a girl. He did succeed in getting a fair number of people to play along with him. He travelled, he wrote for money, he had his dick cut off at his own request, and he was apparently pleased with it all.
If he had lived 600 years ago he might have had a career as a voluntary eunuch.
But maybe that does not qualify as a gender …
Norah Vincent’s book about faking male for a year–as a kind of research project–is pretty interesting. Among other things, she finds that men in company allow that their lives aren’t aways the wonderful, dominant, winning picture which so annoys feminists.
TJ and PA+Cat
Here’s the web archive link to “The Disappearance of Desire” Takes a moment to come up.
https://web.archive.org/web/20180316235439/https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-disappearance-of-desire/
Also a Powerline piece about it here.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/03/the-trans-moment.php
geoffb–
Many thanks!
DNW:
I was responding to your claim that Morris was a “psychologically troubled” person. I was responding by pointing out that by most measures of these things – successful and happy in productive work and in love and family – he was remarkably untroubled, really unusually untroubled.
Perhaps you mean that he was “philosophically troubled.”
A carefully constructed alternate reality which requires the denial of empirically verifiable facts – by the self and others – is psychologically troubled, no matter what public face a delusional person manages to paint on it. We’ve all heard of or known functional psychotics, functional alcoholics, or malignant narcissists. It doesn’t change the underlying neuropathologies.
Getting to a trans-adjacent body dysphoria, we don’t encourage and celebrate people with anorexia – we get them treatment.
I’m not entirely surprised by the Left’s rapid embrace of the mental illness of gender dysphoria (gender has been synonymous with sex for the past 500 years, leftist language games side), but the acceptance of and rationalization of this mental illness on the Right does surprise me.
DNW:
Probably nothing else says this as clearly: your position is, I’d wager, based on well reasoned, scientifically supported evidence that CLEARLY shows our delusions. And that there is no possibility that what a transsexual feels is anything more than play acting, sexual deviancy. Or serious mental disfunction. Or both. But certainly not something that should be granted any serious consideration or support.
For me, last point: there is nothing about my desire to transition that had anything to do with sexual congress. As a matter of fact, that I had no same sex encounters PRIOR to transition was the #1 reason I was denied any medical support from the first group of medical/psychologists. If I wasn’t seeking sexual activities with a man, how could I reasonably want to be a woman? I was therefore “just a repressed homosexual seeking societal blessings by wearing the trappings of womanhood”. Sound familiar? What a load of rubbish. I found the gender clinic started by the University of Chicago Medical Center and was accepted into their program after psychological testing and evaluation, after endocrinological evaluation, and after interviews with the director and two other psychiatrists. I’m not a big fan of ‘credential infatuation’, but I’d wager they had a better grasp on the particulars and better insight into what drives a transsexual than you. Maybe you are similarly credentialed. Maybe you have significant experience.
Many, most, of the transsexuals I’ve met and known over the decades are stable, well adjusted, ACCEPTED women that are part of their families and communities.
Thanks for the comments. And relatively polite conversation.
I did a couple of searches to discover where I claimed ” Morris was a ‘psychologically troubled” person, and don’t see it.
The nearest to such a remark I could find was a general assertion that ,
Now, I suppose you were inferring both that that remark about gender spinning people applied to Morris, and, that “psychologically troubled” meant emotionally distressed; rather than just objectively damaged or disordered in some way.
And in your practice no doubt, people arrived at your doorstep largely because they were unhappy, upset, or in legal or social difficulties of some sort.
My surmise would be however, that there were plenty of people with reality disorders who during the time you held or continue to hold office hours, were perfectly comfortable with them, and never found their way to either your, or to any other counselor’s office.
They may even have smiled a lot for the cameras, had a zest for their lifestyles, earned a great deal of money, and hobnobbed with the rich and famous … even owning considerable assets, including, let’s say, islands and such.
I guess the question as to whether these people can properly be called “troubled” in some objective sense on the one hand, as opposed to “troubled” in their feelings about their desires and in their ability to operate in society at large on the other, is not so much a neutral question as one of professional convention. And I am aware enough, or once was, of the field of psychology to trust that there was no clinical diagnosis labeled “psychologically troubled”.
In fact, you will recall I am certain, that a couple of the outstanding questions that arose among students in the study/field called The Psychology of Adjustment was 1, whether moral monsters could really be called sick if they seemed well adjusted to their impulses and surroundings, and 2, whether comfortably adjusting to a murderous and presumably immoral or hideous system such as Stalinism or Maoism, could be called “healthy”.
Lastly, just based on Morris’ shrugging remarks concerning the etiology of his impulses or conviction, I would say that philosophically troubled was the least of all likely appellations to give him.
He was obviously troubled by his body as a child, you would grant that I am sure. And he was obviously troubled enough by his male genitalia in his mid forties to travel to have it sliced off in Morocco, as well. So we might say, “troubled” makes some sense in that way too.
I do not say that he was not able to move within society at large, earn money, and masquerade as a real female. He was obviously able to do that, where he chose to live. And there are lots of pictures of him smiling too. So we can provisionally conclude that he was rather pleased with the whole process.
At least he did not fill his pockets with rocks and walk into the river. Not that we are entitled to say that there is anything wrong with that either, even if the person did seem “troubled”.
Tracy Coyle says,
In some ways I really don’t like arguing with you, because you are such a sympathetic, open, and possibly vulnerable person. And having borne the load you have, there is no reason for me to seek to heap additional burdens – no matter how readily or casually you may slough them off – on you.
So, I’ll just quote and respond.
In general, and if you mean support for the desire as opposed to some other therapeutic support, then, “Yes, with provisos, more or less”
No it does not. And it seems unreasonable on the face of it, if that is what you were confronted with. My problem with Morris’ assertion of identification is not that he lacked same sex desire, and for that attraction to be surgically “normalized” through a physical transformation; but rather that he claimed to be something that he actually had no insight into being: either physically, or intellectually. He wanted to be “a girl” he said, but he – as others trans types have confessed in retrospect – didn’t know how a real girl (or vice-a-versa) was. All Morris knew was what he imagined being a girl entailed and he wanted that, whatever it was. This, just as the lesbians who pretend to be men had to finally admit that they had no real idea what being a man among other men was.
As I previously stated, I am not looking at the problem through the lens of same sex attraction and I would therefore, and to that extent, agree with you.
You mentioned in another thread that you suffer from several genetic disorders and that that likely bears some level of relevance for interpreting the origins of your condition either by further indication or analogy.
Furthermore, I would not dispute the test findings of endocrinologists, and probably not their conclusions either.
But what that points to in traditional medicine is the presence of a physical disorder with psychological effects. Take Hashimoto syndrome as a roughly parallel case if you will. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24211158/
Of course in your case there may be really significant genetic anomalies which explain your situation.
Those, are none of my business.
The sociopolitical effects of the blue haired gurls of both sexes, is.
@DNW
This gets to a critical point in the discussion, for me at least. To legitimize the trans position, one must first assume that there is such a thing as an inherent male or female “feeling”, or even – as in the current discussions on race – that men and women all share similar experiences beyond the physiological within their respective gender cohorts.
Talk about rubbish.
DNW:
Consider this – prior to transition it is difficult for a male to know what happens amongst women when ONLY women are present. No matter how observant someone is, they can’t peer into such private spaces. And men, when only men are present, behave much differently than when women are around. You can assume such prior to transition, but what the differences are, there is little telling. Once transition proceeds to a specific point (passing), then you begin to see the differences and in some cases, it is startling! I was surprised by some things, and the behavioral attitudes of others once we transition can be jarring. My surgeon told me after my SRS/GRS that I had lost 20 IQ points – he was joking. But given how I was treated after transitioning, it appeared men thought so.
No matter how well you are prepared for a cultural change, the reality is different and I believe, it is how I took the commentary referenced, that is what Morris was noting. We are socialized, we are taught, we experience society as males for decades. We think we understand how it works and how others experience it. But I will tell you, once on the other side, it is quite different.
I don’t accept the rubbish the Left perpetuates about society, and the “sociopolitical effects of the blue haired gurls” ARE damaging, not to just society, but to the community of transsexuals they supposedly represent (they don’t). ON that we are probably in agreement. Toss out the Leftist rubbish, not the transsexuals.
Birth defects are not always noticeable in newborns, and some take years to express themselves. Whether that explains my situation EXPLICITLY or not, it does suggest that people need to at least be open to the possibilities. Such WAS the effort of the medical community towards transsexuals in the 80s, 90s and into the 2000s. I am not certain of that anymore.
Thank you.
Again, Tracy Coyle, thank you so much for your patience with those of us here not well educated on this topic!
My guess is John Tyler is on to something with his 11:51am comment.
From what I know this type of behavior (for lack of a more educated term) has occurred across all cultures throughout all of recorded history. And, I think(?) more commonly among males portraying themselves as females than vice versa, although many (most?) cultures seem to have mythic figures like Calamity Jane.
I have no idea what it is like to live inside someone else’s head and when I encounter someone as logical, patient and informative as Tracy I am perfectly willing to entertain the notion I may not know everything.
as logical, patient and informative as Tracey
Her remarks on Dr. McHugh were anything but informative.
The closest I can get, which is almost certainly a l-o-n-g way off, is things my mind tell me to do for my benefit which are not universal. Up until about age 12 I was rather scrawny and very bookish, although reasonably social and extroverted. If you would have asked my junior high teachers, coaches and classmates to pick the male student who would help lead the school basketball team to the conference championship in two years and be a football and track star in High School I would have received 0 votes. Yet, sometime around sixth and seventh grade I began exercising like mad. I remember it as nearly overnight. One day I went to bed with minimal interest in athletics and fitness, the next morning I woke up and couldn’t stop exercising and training.
And I really enjoy that switch. I think it has been a benefit to me. It is who I am and I don’t want it to go away. Yet I have many very good, intelligent friends who look at me like I’m mad. Why waste time running and sweating while on a scenic vacation? Why spend hours in solitary training, away from wife, kids, friends… when there is no race to run, game to win? Soon after being married my wife watched me prepare for a vigorous run on a hot, summer’s day and said, “You’ve already showered today and were dressed nicely. Why choose to sweat?” It was a great question. It had never even occurred to me.
I don’t think that switch in my brain is right or wrong. I don’t think people who do not have it; like my wife and at least one of our children, are wrong. In some ways I can see that I could be a tad happier if I didn’t have that continual voice in my head, but it’s there, an integral part of me, and I can’t imagine myself without it.
I bet we all have similar things. Why does neo spend so much of her day writing for the benefit of people she will never meet? Why does DNW practice shooting? Sure, writing and shooting are practical skills, but are they necessary? I think for neo and DNW they are. Does DNW think I’m mentally damaged because I have no desire to own or fire a weapon? I would guess not.
Again, minor things compared to one’s gender identity, but maybe it’s a small insight into how minds can differ?
Because the physical contest on the track is not the only one you may be called upon to meet for your family’s sake. Because no matter what age you are, comparative strength and confidence may allow you to wordlessly navigate to a more successful conclusion that you otherwise would have when confronted by, say, a group of obstreperous half drunk youth wreaking havoc at a public outing.
You may be able to calmly back them down if you look as though you might be able to do something about protecting your family if they continue to recklessly escalate and endanger.
What’s ‘Bradley Manning’ going to do about half a dozen teenagers tossing cherry bombs next to a 4th of July crowd? What’s he got to back his politeness with?
Now I suppose it could work out less well in some cases. One might for example be charged with assault and battery. Even if the judge commends you and your record is expunged, you might have to pay a lawyer, and even a small amercement.
Not that I would know anything about that, myself.
Yes, interposing yourself has some dangers, and they might not all be physical.
The newest generation are experts in provocation and their lives are so pointless they may be glad to die as a result of their provocations. They probably believe it is a matter of pressing a reset button rather than spending eternity bathed in sulfurous fumes and blazing heat. In any event for a moment at least, their useless and pointless lives attain meaning; even if it is only through their power to annoy and harm.
I am personally of the opinion that it is best to give people enough rope to hang themselves; though that tactic won’t play either once the justice system is totally corrupted and woke. At that point even obvious self-defense will become a crime.
@DNW:
“The sociopolitical effects of the blue haired gurls of both sexes, is.”
What are Spiteful Mutants? Social Epistasis Amplification model:
https://youtu.be/NxWx5w44kgQ
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-030-32984-6_7
“We build on the finding of accumulating deleterious mutations with the SEAM (the social epistasis amplification model), which posits that the fitness costs of deleterious mutations are not limited to the organisms that carry them. This is possible in light of the existence of interorganismal genomic interactions, that is, social epistasis, whereby the genome of an organism (or the genomes of organisms) can influence another organism’s (or other organisms’) gene expression and therefore phenotypic traits.
If social epistasis occurs in humans, and evidence suggests that it does, it is possible that mutations can social-epistatically alter patterns of gene expression in pathological ways, and therefore the fitness costs of these mutations can be potentially massively amplified. We use a statistical model to empirically test predictions of the SEAM, and results are found to strongly support these predictions. We discuss implications of the SEAM for the history of Western populations.”
In other news, Your Individual and Group (ca. 1850) Prejudices Know Best. They were selected for for good reasons.
Anyone who enjoys travel writing would enjoy her marvelous book “Venice”, one of her superb books on cities.