“My 7th grade schoolmates would call me a fag. “Progressives” would now call me “queer.” Because I don’t have gender dysphoria, it is pretty simple. I am a man and always will be a man. I am Tom. I always was Tom.”
I can relate to this more than I would like to admit in a public forum.
This is both well-written and true. We all have fluid and evolving self-perceptions that are informed by both our biology and the conditions in which we develop.
These changing perceptions do not change our sex. Like the author, many men (and women) wish they were more readily accepted when they assume nontraditional roles. Unfortunately, to be that accepting of others requires thoughtfulness, patience, and the ability to think critically. These characteristics are currently in short supply.
As a fellow psychologist, I appreciated this essay very much. Thank you.
As I’ve said elsewhere: I don’t know what it “feels like” to be a woman. I only know what it “feels like” to be me. None of us can ever, truly, know what it feels like to be anyone other than who we are. And when it comes to so-called “gender identity,” just about any description of “feeling like” the opposite sex is dependent on sex/gender stereotypes.
Thank you for articulating so clearly what I’ve been thinking for a while: I do not have a “gender identity.” I am of a certain sex (female). And I now (when I can) push back on, or decline to answer, questions that conflate the two. (It used to not bother me when a form said something like “Gender: M / F” because a lot of us were using “gender” as a prudish euphemism for “sex.” But now it’s a much more loaded term. Or the form now says “Gender: M / F / NB / other / none.”)
I love Tom. Jo loves Tom. I do not have a gender identity either. I love the clarity of your mind on this subject. I think you should write a children’s book about this. Seriously. Thank you for this essay.
This reminds me of something a former patient told me about his troubled teenage years: "At first I thought I was confused about my gender. Eventually I realized I just didn't know who I was at all."
Feb 27, 2023·edited Feb 27, 2023Liked by Tom Sherry
My peak-trans moment came in 2016, when two unrelated moms of teens girls told me about their daughter's binder requests, and I thought, WHOA, back it up, Josephine, I haven't campaigned for women's rights so that we'd start binding our breasts the way women's feet were once bound.
This movement hinges on overlooking or forgetting that 1) social contagions strike adolescent girls harder than any other group; 2) the American health-care system is a for-profit industry with a built-in incentive to support iatrogenic illnesses. I am not cynical enough to believe that the scores of pediatric gender clinics (not counting Planned Parenthood clinics) which have sprung up in the past 5-10 years don't really believe they are helping children. I think they believe in their mission, which just happens to be result in exactly what would happen if, say, our society decided to sterilize gender-non-conforming/likely-gay children; 3) that the old-school transvestite/transsexual men were in it to get off, and this is still true, which is why your neighborhood trans-folx are the wispy bearded 5'3" froggy voiced "men" and the 6' "women" who are the only "women" at their job wearing mini-skirts & fishnet stockings, and no one dares to challenge that; and 4) lastly, that this movement is anything but progressive because of how it allows men to become the first "female" Jeopardy champion/ass't secr. of health, supports putting rapists into women's prisons, allows any man to walk into any women's locker room/changing room, contends that a lesbian who refuses to have sex with be-penised individuals is a bigot, and undoes decades of fighting for parity in sports, tossing women off of podiums in sports, from golf to swimming to bicycling to weight-lifting.
I wish someone had noticed this before we got to "gee, maybe castrating boys and sending girls into menopause 40 years early isn't such a great idea" but here we are.
Nobody has ever, or will ever, mistake me for a female. I was "all boy" as a kid, and nothing about me suggests femininity today, by current American standards.
But inside, I exhibit a number of traits that our dumb society has labeled "feminine." Among them: I like colors, a lot; I am a "verbal processor"; I actually love therapy, where my wife can't stand it; I am effusively emotional; I like "relationship" and in my marriage am both sexual and emotional pursuer—I crave affection and touch as "real men" are not "supposed" to.
It's all nonsense and theater and stereotype and it's extremely irritating. That's why I like the way Lisa Selin Davis and similar thinkers approach it: The problem is society's stupid attempt at placing people in straitjackets with regard to "gender" behavior.
As has been noted by Davis and others, there has historically been more acceptance of "tomboys," i.e. girls who display more "masculine" interests and traits, than supposedly "feminine" boys. That's gross sexism and incredibly unfair to boys and men who do not conform to society's foolish "norms."
And of course now we have the situation in which boys or girls who do not "conform" to bizarre stereotypes and expectations are flat-out informed that they are the other sex.
Utter insanity.
Christians and right-wingers bear much of the blame for this because of their egregious homophobia and idiotic gender stereotyping. It makes me laugh when they freak out over the "trans" craze, because their own habits of dissing and shaming and trashing gayness have no doubt helped to get us here.
Let people be who they are. If some guy wants to wear eye makeup, why should anyone care? If some girl wants to be a tough-ass on a rugby field, I say, hell yeah!
Thank you so much for sharing this. It occurs to me that the reason why not conforming to gender stereotypes is now so radical that it requires labels like "trans" and "queer" and different pronouns is because the stereotypes themselves have become so rigid. Twenty or thirty years ago we barely noticed if someone didn't conform (at least in blue areas). Did recent generations bring back these strict gender dichotomies so that they could forge identities by rejecting them? Have big pharma and biotech been behind the revival of gender stereotypes for a long time, or did they just spot a good thing and jump on the bandwagon? Martine Rothblatt, the world's highest paid TIM, specializes in growing and harvesting organs. Could (s)he have a motive for encouraging young men and women to get theirs cut off? What a way to develop a market for your product!
Love this! Thank you! Your interests and actions make up who you are... biology is incidental. The gender activists are focused on the wrong thing and are developing into truly boring people. What you spend your time doing is your identity. And you have spent your time well- focused on skills instead of biology...
I also recently concluded that I don't have a gender identity though the road to that conclusion was a little different as the mother of a daughter who wants to be called "he". I actually told a complete stranger I was "agender". I explained I am post-post modern. If transwomen are women then I am no longer a woman. We need to come up with a new word.
Thank you, this is wonderful! I can picture Tom with his flower arrangement or at the kitchen sink saying, "My ‘gender identity’ just happens to be congruent with everything your eyes and 20 million years of human evolution can see." There’s more than one way to be man, of course! As a girl and then woman, I've been "non-conforming" too since I was raised by a feminist mom and never learned that I was supposed to play dumb and always agree with men. Shamelessly smart and opinionated girls will surely be considered too masculine for a woman's body in this new gender rigid world, and what a loss that would be. No more Mae Wests or Sharon Stones or Natalie Portmans, etc.!? Just as Tom found happiness despite his non traditional manhood, a world of pleasure and joy is possible for the vast majority of non conformists in the bodies God gave us.
But you know, I don't think there is that much gender fluidity in life. If you are gay, especially an effeminate gay man, understanding that is a survival tactic. Masculinity and femininity have so much more in common throughout the world than they have difference.
And sex is observed, not assigned.....Homo sapiens are not a creation apart.
“My 7th grade schoolmates would call me a fag. “Progressives” would now call me “queer.” Because I don’t have gender dysphoria, it is pretty simple. I am a man and always will be a man. I am Tom. I always was Tom.”
I can relate to this more than I would like to admit in a public forum.
This is both well-written and true. We all have fluid and evolving self-perceptions that are informed by both our biology and the conditions in which we develop.
https://everythingisbiology.substack.com/p/there-is-biological-evidence-for
These changing perceptions do not change our sex. Like the author, many men (and women) wish they were more readily accepted when they assume nontraditional roles. Unfortunately, to be that accepting of others requires thoughtfulness, patience, and the ability to think critically. These characteristics are currently in short supply.
As a fellow psychologist, I appreciated this essay very much. Thank you.
Sincerely, Frederick
As I’ve said elsewhere: I don’t know what it “feels like” to be a woman. I only know what it “feels like” to be me. None of us can ever, truly, know what it feels like to be anyone other than who we are. And when it comes to so-called “gender identity,” just about any description of “feeling like” the opposite sex is dependent on sex/gender stereotypes.
Thank you for articulating so clearly what I’ve been thinking for a while: I do not have a “gender identity.” I am of a certain sex (female). And I now (when I can) push back on, or decline to answer, questions that conflate the two. (It used to not bother me when a form said something like “Gender: M / F” because a lot of us were using “gender” as a prudish euphemism for “sex.” But now it’s a much more loaded term. Or the form now says “Gender: M / F / NB / other / none.”)
I love Tom. Jo loves Tom. I do not have a gender identity either. I love the clarity of your mind on this subject. I think you should write a children’s book about this. Seriously. Thank you for this essay.
Thank you.
This reminds me of something a former patient told me about his troubled teenage years: "At first I thought I was confused about my gender. Eventually I realized I just didn't know who I was at all."
My peak-trans moment came in 2016, when two unrelated moms of teens girls told me about their daughter's binder requests, and I thought, WHOA, back it up, Josephine, I haven't campaigned for women's rights so that we'd start binding our breasts the way women's feet were once bound.
This movement hinges on overlooking or forgetting that 1) social contagions strike adolescent girls harder than any other group; 2) the American health-care system is a for-profit industry with a built-in incentive to support iatrogenic illnesses. I am not cynical enough to believe that the scores of pediatric gender clinics (not counting Planned Parenthood clinics) which have sprung up in the past 5-10 years don't really believe they are helping children. I think they believe in their mission, which just happens to be result in exactly what would happen if, say, our society decided to sterilize gender-non-conforming/likely-gay children; 3) that the old-school transvestite/transsexual men were in it to get off, and this is still true, which is why your neighborhood trans-folx are the wispy bearded 5'3" froggy voiced "men" and the 6' "women" who are the only "women" at their job wearing mini-skirts & fishnet stockings, and no one dares to challenge that; and 4) lastly, that this movement is anything but progressive because of how it allows men to become the first "female" Jeopardy champion/ass't secr. of health, supports putting rapists into women's prisons, allows any man to walk into any women's locker room/changing room, contends that a lesbian who refuses to have sex with be-penised individuals is a bigot, and undoes decades of fighting for parity in sports, tossing women off of podiums in sports, from golf to swimming to bicycling to weight-lifting.
I wish someone had noticed this before we got to "gee, maybe castrating boys and sending girls into menopause 40 years early isn't such a great idea" but here we are.
Nobody has ever, or will ever, mistake me for a female. I was "all boy" as a kid, and nothing about me suggests femininity today, by current American standards.
But inside, I exhibit a number of traits that our dumb society has labeled "feminine." Among them: I like colors, a lot; I am a "verbal processor"; I actually love therapy, where my wife can't stand it; I am effusively emotional; I like "relationship" and in my marriage am both sexual and emotional pursuer—I crave affection and touch as "real men" are not "supposed" to.
It's all nonsense and theater and stereotype and it's extremely irritating. That's why I like the way Lisa Selin Davis and similar thinkers approach it: The problem is society's stupid attempt at placing people in straitjackets with regard to "gender" behavior.
As has been noted by Davis and others, there has historically been more acceptance of "tomboys," i.e. girls who display more "masculine" interests and traits, than supposedly "feminine" boys. That's gross sexism and incredibly unfair to boys and men who do not conform to society's foolish "norms."
And of course now we have the situation in which boys or girls who do not "conform" to bizarre stereotypes and expectations are flat-out informed that they are the other sex.
Utter insanity.
Christians and right-wingers bear much of the blame for this because of their egregious homophobia and idiotic gender stereotyping. It makes me laugh when they freak out over the "trans" craze, because their own habits of dissing and shaming and trashing gayness have no doubt helped to get us here.
Let people be who they are. If some guy wants to wear eye makeup, why should anyone care? If some girl wants to be a tough-ass on a rugby field, I say, hell yeah!
Thank you so much for sharing this. It occurs to me that the reason why not conforming to gender stereotypes is now so radical that it requires labels like "trans" and "queer" and different pronouns is because the stereotypes themselves have become so rigid. Twenty or thirty years ago we barely noticed if someone didn't conform (at least in blue areas). Did recent generations bring back these strict gender dichotomies so that they could forge identities by rejecting them? Have big pharma and biotech been behind the revival of gender stereotypes for a long time, or did they just spot a good thing and jump on the bandwagon? Martine Rothblatt, the world's highest paid TIM, specializes in growing and harvesting organs. Could (s)he have a motive for encouraging young men and women to get theirs cut off? What a way to develop a market for your product!
Would give this 5 hearts if I could! Clear, concise, and awesome. Thank you Tom!
👏👏👏
Love this! Thank you! Your interests and actions make up who you are... biology is incidental. The gender activists are focused on the wrong thing and are developing into truly boring people. What you spend your time doing is your identity. And you have spent your time well- focused on skills instead of biology...
I also recently concluded that I don't have a gender identity though the road to that conclusion was a little different as the mother of a daughter who wants to be called "he". I actually told a complete stranger I was "agender". I explained I am post-post modern. If transwomen are women then I am no longer a woman. We need to come up with a new word.
The roles we learn to play do not change our biology. Acceptance of those roles without judgment is the key.
Thank you, this is wonderful! I can picture Tom with his flower arrangement or at the kitchen sink saying, "My ‘gender identity’ just happens to be congruent with everything your eyes and 20 million years of human evolution can see." There’s more than one way to be man, of course! As a girl and then woman, I've been "non-conforming" too since I was raised by a feminist mom and never learned that I was supposed to play dumb and always agree with men. Shamelessly smart and opinionated girls will surely be considered too masculine for a woman's body in this new gender rigid world, and what a loss that would be. No more Mae Wests or Sharon Stones or Natalie Portmans, etc.!? Just as Tom found happiness despite his non traditional manhood, a world of pleasure and joy is possible for the vast majority of non conformists in the bodies God gave us.
🙌 🙌 🙌 Brilliant!!
Thank you for this.
But you know, I don't think there is that much gender fluidity in life. If you are gay, especially an effeminate gay man, understanding that is a survival tactic. Masculinity and femininity have so much more in common throughout the world than they have difference.
And sex is observed, not assigned.....Homo sapiens are not a creation apart.