A bunch (21) of doctors and Ph.D.s from nine countries (Finland, the UK, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, France, Switzerland, South Africa, and the U.S.) published the following op-ed in Friday’s Wall Street Journal. It might be paywalled, so I reproduced the entire short letter below.
First, be aware that this, as noted below, was in response to a letter from the President of the Endocrine Society published recently, a letter that staunchly defends the efficacy of “gender-affirming care.” That care involves a combination of therapy and, nearly always, medical intervention through hormones. That letter, from Dr. Stephen Hammes, said this:
Roy Eappen and Ian Kingsbury’s op-ed “The Endocrine Society’s Dangerous Transgender Politicization” (June 29) ignores scientific evidence and the conclusions reached by the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and other reputable medical organizations. More than 2,000 studies published since 1975 form a clear picture: Gender-affirming care improves the well-being of transgender and gender-diverse people and reduces the risk of suicide.
If you already know the evidence, you’ll know that this claim is wrong: there is not enough evidence to form a “clear picture” of either well-being or suicide. In response, the signers of the letter below (not shown) took issue with Hammes’s claims.
Click the headline to read, but here’s the whold thing. And I’ve put the important parts in bold:
As experienced professionals involved in direct care for the rapidly growing numbers of gender-diverse youth, the evaluation of medical evidence or both, we were surprised by the Endocrine Society’s claims about the state of evidence for gender-affirming care for youth (Letters, July 5). Stephen Hammes, president of the Endocrine Society, writes, “More than 2,000 studies published since 1975 form a clear picture: Gender-affirming care improves the well-being of transgender and gender-diverse people and reduces the risk of suicide.” This claim is not supported by the best available evidence.
Every systematic review of evidence to date, including one published in the Journal of the Endocrine Society, has found the evidence for mental-health benefits of hormonal interventions for minors to be of low or very low certainty. By contrast, the risks are significant and include sterility, lifelong dependence on medication and the anguish of regret. For this reason, more and more European countries and international professional organizations now recommend psychotherapy rather than hormones and surgeries as the first line of treatment for gender-dysphoric youth.
Dr. Hammes’s claim that gender transition reduces suicides is contradicted by every systematic review, including the review published by the Endocrine Society, which states, “We could not draw any conclusions about death by suicide.” There is no reliable evidence to suggest that hormonal transition is an effective suicide-prevention measure.
The politicization of transgender healthcare in the U.S. is unfortunate. The way to combat it is for medical societies to align their recommendations with the best available evidence—rather than exaggerating the benefits and minimizing the risks.
This letter is signed by 21 clinicians and researchers from nine countries.
There’s also a coda to this letter, which appears to be a kind of addendum (like a Supreme Court Justice’s partial dissent) coming from someone who may have been asked to sign the op-ed:
Transgenderism has been highly politicized—on both sides. There are those who will justify any hormonal-replacement intervention for any young person who may have been identified as possibly having gender dysphoria. This is dangerous, as probably only a minority of those so identified truly qualify for this diagnosis. On the other hand, there are those who wouldn’t accept any hormonal intervention, regardless of the specifics of the individual patients.
Endocrinologists aren’t psychiatrists. We aren’t the ones who can identify gender-dysphoric individuals. The point isn’t to open the floodgates and offer an often-irreversible treatment to all people who may have issues with their sexuality, but to determine who would truly benefit from it.
Jesus L. Penabad, M.D.
Tarpon Springs, Fla.
I agree with that letter, too. I would never ban transsexual medical treatment for those people old enough to make an informed decision (I’m thinking about 18 years old), but young people need objective therapy, not “rah rah—>hormones” therapy. If a therapist prescribes puberty blockers for a young person on the very first visit (or worse, sends them to doctors prescribing gender-change hormones), that is not a good therapist.
Of course the solution to this dilemma is research, which is why several European countries have put puberty blockers into the class of “clinical experiments” and are starting to practice less “rah-rah: transition” therapy in favor of actually listening to children without instantly affirming their desire to transition. That’s especially important because the large majority of young people experiencing gender dysphoria (about 80%, I think), eventually grow out of it, often by simply becoming gay. And being gay doesn’t run the risks of medical complications, sterility, and the inability to have orgasms: some of the side effects of hormone treatment.
And it would help if extreme gender activists would stop politicizing this issue. In all my years of writing on this site, I don’t think I’ve ever gotten such nasty and ignorant pushback as I have from gender activists who accuse me of transphobia simply because I think we need more research before we start injecting hormones into children and adolescents, lopping off bits of their bodies, and giving them objective rather than “affirmative” therapy. That view is not “fear of trans people”, for crying out loud. But the activists, who have ideology but not evidence on their side, resort to name-calling to intimidate their opponents. And it often works.
The pile-on also comes if one suggests, as did Abigail Shrier, that there can be social pressure that influences people to change their gender, a claim that by now I think is undeniable. (Adults, of course, are free to make their own decisions, but again, these should be informed decisions, and the long term effects, both medical and psychological, of transitioning are not often discussed. One reason is that gender activists rain down hatred on anyone who brings up these issues.)
In Friday’s Weekly Dish, Andrew Sullivan picked up on this letter and wrote about it, giving some statistics in response to the oft-heard claim made by some doctors and therapists advising parents of gender-dysphoric children, “Do you want a live boy or a dead girl?” That, of course, implies a very high risk of suicide by girls who aren’t allowed to transition to the male gender. Sullivan:
To give a sense of the bullshit, here’s Stephen Hammes, president of the Endocrine Society:
More than 2,000 studies published since 1975 form a clear picture: Gender-affirming care improves the well-being of transgender and gender-diverse people and reduces the risk of suicide.
Note the vagueness, and the absence of any mention of children — the only population we need to be concerned about. And here is the Endocrine Society’s own study on sex reassignments for kids:
We could not draw any conclusions about death by suicide.
Today, in the Wall Street Journal, 21 pediatric clinicians from nine countries call Hammes out. In those countries that have conducted systematic evidence-based reviews of all the studies involving children, all of them have concluded that “the evidence for mental-health benefits of hormonal interventions for minors [is] of low or very low certainty.” The risks — permanent sterility, inability to experience orgasm ever, irreversible changes to the body, voice and face — are very real. Yet the American Academy of Pediatrics refuses to conduct a similar systematic review, five years after its last guidance.
A survey of a decade of child transitions in the UK, from 2010 to 2020, found that the data “shed no light” on whether reassignment affects the suicide rate. But here’s the stunner: of the more than 15,000 children treated for gender dysphoria, the number of suicides was four. It is insane to believe that every child with dysphoria will kill themselves if not subjected to a sex change. If a doctor tells you this, find another doctor.
Why would they lie like this? I honestly don’t know. Here are some possibilities: misguided compassion for children in distress; believing you are part of a cultural revolution that starts with children; banking on the vast revenues of having patients for a lifetime of treatment; or just following ideological fiats, intimidated by woke peers, and fearing liability for past missteps.
I think that pretty much covers all the possibilities. I’m not sure why the U.S., compared to other countries, is particularly resistant to discussion of medical and psychological issues like this, especially given that this isn’t just an ideological discussion, but a discussion with medical consequences. As far as I can see, we should be doing what the Europeans are increasingly doing about this issue: collecting more data.
Note the vagueness of that “More than 2,000 studies …”. The response should be “pick the best one and we’ll discuss it”. They won’t, because they know that there isn’t a “best one” to pick. If they did point to one or a few, people could go and read them and everyone could then see how weak the evidence is.
This reminds me of theologians who will wave airly at shelves of books, rather than saying “this one book here contains the best evidence for God”. It’s evasion.
The word “gender” :
Leslie MacMillan argued that “gender” is for words. Only in the 80’s did “gender” start to get applied to people.
So I am looking for substantial literature to support the conclusion I am looking at – that ” gender” applied to living things is … not what it seems. Judith Butler apparently capitalized on “gender”, and ti the extent it is indistinguishable from “soul”.
I think the use of the word gender as a “polite” replacement for sex is an additional, distinct use of the word. It’s easy to find examples where someone uses gender to refer to the sex of animals, or even plants. Obviously, animals and plants do not have gender roles or gender identities.
Yes, the idea that gender and sex are two different things is understandable when “gender” referred to cultural beliefs about masculinity and femininity. A woman who works in heavy construction doesn’t conform to her gender, the girlish role of stereotypical expectations assigned to her.
But she doesn’t have a gender. Thinking she does is a huge departure from gender-as-social-construction which we may or may not conform to. It’s no longer understandable.
I understand the reasonable desire to separate the whole vague issue of Gender Identity from the specific question of ensuring safe, well-tested medical procedures to treat Gender Dysphoria, but I’m not sure it’s possible. How do you set the standard of care for a symptom of a syndrome which not only can’t be objectively tested for, but can’t even be clearly defined?
“A woman who works in heavy construction doesn’t conform to her gender, the girlish role of stereotypical expectations assigned to her.
But she doesn’t have a gender.”
Excellent… she doesn’t own or possess a gender – even though her driver’s license might say “gender” – which makes even less sense to me now, come to think of it.
BTW I just saw Amnesty International argue for womens’ rights v. The Taliban, using “gender” in their ad. It’s on Twitter under (I think) … “gender persecution”
https://twitter.com/amnesty/status/1679857674421239809?s=46
In common use, “gender” is usually an analogy for “sex.”
When separated in feminist ideology, it refers to a stereotypical set of expectations imposed on men and women.
When separated in gender ideology — its meaning is unclear even though we all “have one.” It fluctuates depending on speaker and situation. Gender sometimes means social stereotypes, sometimes means sex, sometimes designates a third thing which seems to be a sense of sex which requires social approval — or all of these or none of them.
Genderists often seem to be cagey about defining it, as if suspecting a trap from someone who isn’t acting in Good Faith. I’ve never noticed a similar reluctance though from scientists defining complicated evolution terms to Creationists, who are expected to be hostile.
Amnesty International :
“They [women and girls] do not deserve to be persecuted for their gender”
They mean sex. They are trying to erase (binary dichotomous) sex and replace it with a term that means whatever they want it to mean in their others spheres of activism.
There are a lot of people getting “gender reassignment surgery” these days, even though I believe it is a misnomer.
My understanding of gender, (a subject I have been dragged into and forced to think hard about and take a position on) is that gender is how sex differences are expressed through behavior. Not that there are lists of behaviors that one sex must always do and the other must never do. Girls can enjoy driving excavators without breaking any rules.
I really believe that most of the gender/sex talk is a dialectic tactic meant to derail serious inquiry into exactly what trans activism is about.
As for the side effects and consequences of “affirmation”, it is a matter of politics superseding any other concern, even the well being of the patient. Exactly as the BLM protests during the peak of Covid
“We should always evaluate the risks and benefits of efforts to control the virus,” Jennifer Nuzzo, a Johns Hopkins epidemiologist, tweeted on Tuesday. “In this moment the public health risks of not protesting to demand an end to systemic racism greatly exceed the harms of the virus.”
The risk of queer activists not reaching their goals of dismantling capitalism and the family as an economic unit exceed in importancethe risks faced by a child being surgically and chemically sterilized, then taking hormone therapy for the rest of their lives. The medicines and procedures, if the patient were not an alphabet person, would be carefully and gravely considered, risk vs possible benefit, long term side effects, and more. I remember listening to my mom and my wife discussing the dangers of Mom continuing to take hormone replacements as she got older.
When my child was given a prescription for a similar drug, I was not even informed. Even if the doc had discussed the long-term risks with my child, it would not have mattered in a normal world. Children cannot give informed consent, except apparently in trans issues.
I do not see much moral difference between doctors pushing trans medicine on kids and people like Dr. Carl Clauberg or Viktor Brack.
– There are a lot of people getting “gender reassignment surgery” these days, even though I believe it is a misnomer. –
Sounds like a misnomer to me too, and an amusing one.
Alternatively, taking it at it’s word, it conjures up weird images of psychic surgeons (if that is the correct term) removing, tinkering with and then replacing the gendered soul or id of their patient. It also prompts the question of whether such a procedure would fall foul of the conversion therapy regulations in Canada described below by Leslie MacMillan.
I think all of us who are old enough will remember a time when gender was only used in language classes, and we saw it sneak in (mainly courtesy of prudish Americans, I’m afraid) as a replacement for the more appropriate ‘sex’ when discussing matters biological and reproductive around that time.
As for the whole argument about affirmative care, I’d comment that affirmative care IS conversion therapy, and that anyone involved in the whole business needs to keep ‘primum non nocere’ at the front of their minds.
It was only on the pages of WEIT did I first learn that there is a technical distinction between sex (fully ‘biological sex’), and gender. Before then, I would probably see them as pretty much interchangeable terms and I’m sure a lot of other people did as well.
But online sources that seem pretty official do consistently make the distinction between the terms.
For example, from the Medical News Today site: ““Sex” refers to the physical differences between people who are male, female, or intersex. A person typically has their sex assigned at birth based on physiological characteristics, including their genitalia and chromosome composition. This assigned sex is called a person’s “natal sex.”
Gender, on the other hand, involves how a person identifies. Unlike natal sex, gender is not made up of binary forms. Instead, gender is a broad spectrum.”
From Wikipedia: “Though the terms sex and gender have been used interchangeably since at least the fourteenth century,[1] in contemporary academic literature they usually have distinct meanings. Sex generally refers to an organism’s biological sex, while gender usually refers to either social roles based on the sex of a person (gender role) or personal identification of one’s own gender based on an internal awareness (gender identity).”
A bit sadly, several sites, such as the first one, don’t really get into the role of gametes and biological sex. I wonder if these are recent revisions, or what.
As someone who works delivering a relatively new and effective cancer treatment (CAR T cell therapy), I have to say I am astonished at the cavalier approach of many advocates for youth transition to the safety of their therapies and dismissal of the need to understand the complexity of patients they intend to treat. The scrutiny our therapies have gotten, and the care and due diligence, good practices, sound science, and many clinical trials we use (and are required to do, both in a regulatory and professional ethics sense!) are the chief reason they are so successful.
I agree with our host, the doc’s letter and Mr Sullivan; there simply isn’t enough data on the safety and effectiveness of transition therapies for minors. Frankly, I don’t understand the impetus behind the medical, scientific and regulatory professionals who seem to have left their professional ethics behind. They are so dilgent (rightly so!) in closely monitoring the development of the kind of therapies we’ve devised.
It’s probably rooted in fanaticism but, as some have suggested, fear probably plays a role too. Just look at what’s happened to Dr PCC(e) for suggesting something eminently sound; when it comes to life changing therapies for children, we ought to use caution until enough data comes in to guide best practices.
But, in the end, I don’t think I’ll ever understand that way of thinking.
Under what circumstances would a person experiencing gender dysphoria benefit more from cross-sex hormones and surgery than from psychiatric care? I’m skeptical but can think of some. One is that psychotherapy takes a long time to bear fruit and is very expensive. Canada’s public health systems provide free psychiatric care only for the most ill individuals; having the feeling of being a woman trapped in a man’s body, though very distressing, doesn’t qualify for care; so only those with private insurance might be able to access this care.OTOH medical and surgical care can be accessed more readily and that might seem like a faster route to relief for some people.
My real beef is with puberty blockers for young people. I can’t think of any circumstances where anyone should be prevented from going through puberty, which is an important developmental stage for all humans. One might even say “medically necessary”.
An insurmountable barrier to psychotherapy in Canada (whether by psychiatrists, psychologists, or GPs) is that if it has, or seems to the police to have, the goal of making someone psychologically comfortable with their birth sex, the therapist will be charged under the Criminal Code with performing conversion therapy. You heard this right: if your patient becomes less distressed about her body image—“gets better”—because of your therapy, you have committed a crime. A conviction can result in jail time.
The law does not even provide as a defence that the psychotherapy was medically appropriate, beneficial, or desired by the patient. It is illegal and that’s that. Even if new knowledge comes forth that proves the best treatment for gender dysphoria really is guidance that it will resolve on its own, it would still be illegal to say that to the patient as a reason for not prescribing hormones or doing surgery if demanded. Such is the hold on Canada’s lawmakers by the gender radicals. They don’t want to lose one single convert to the cult and the politicians are terrified of them. (The bill passed by unanimous consent—not a peep from the Opposition.)
Talking it out to see what’s really going on remains legal but you can see how fine a line this is if a patient is raring to start hormones and interprets the doctor’s reticence as conversion therapy on the sly. The safest path is just to prescribe hormones or even puberty blockers at the first visit, as many do.
Yes you’re right those new changes make talk therapy harder to access for those who might benefit and a harder needle to thread for the therapist. To safely pursue talk therapy, the therapist I guess would need to know the patient very well to predict her reaction to being “converted”.
If you’ve come to know her well enough to predict her reaction, you are already guilty of CT because she should have been prescribed hormones by now.
It’s also illegal to advertise or “promote” conversion therapy, not just illegal to perform it or recommend it for a specific patient. The government PR around the bill (C-4, 2021 for those keeping track) states that it intended to suppress “public messaging” that transgender expression was in any way deviant or abnormal and in need of fixing, other than to correct the physical body to match the true gender. The goal was to spare the hurt feelings of the TG community generally, not just patients who fell into the clutches of the conversion therapists. The government bragged that it was introducing the most comprehensive and far-reaching protection against conversion therapy in the world.
When the Prime Minister says that Canada “stands against hate” that transwomen are not women, this is what he’s talking about. Fortunately it’s the police, not the political hard men and women in the Prime Minister’s Office who lay Criminal Code charges, but speak very carefully. The Charter will not protect your speech.
Therapists are in danger in the UK, too. For example, James Esses, a trainee therapist who was expelled by his university and whose lawsuit is due later this year. You can read about his case (and support him) here: https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/expelled-university-free-speech/
The “affirmative therapy” fad is rather reminiscent of the “recovered memory therapy” fad of a generation ago (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory_syndrome). That too swept through the practice of “therapy” in the US particularly, rather than in Europe. It ended after a series of successful malpractice suits against therapists involved in the creation of implausible “recovered” memories—very likely a sign of what is in store for “affirmative care” specialists.
Incidentally, the useful Wiki page contains a link to another page on “alien abduction”. I wonder if we can look forward to a new fad in therapeutic practice: affirmative treatment for those who believe that they were abducted by aliens.
I think you’re right. Sadly, change will only come when either (i) enough people who have undergone the treatment denounce it or (ii) malpractice lawsuits deter practitioners from dispensing the treatments with such abandon. It takes bad outcomes to restore balance.
Also similar (I’m not suggesting it is meaningful):
“Facilitated communication” for those with genuinely impaired communication:
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2023/05/17/nature-falls-for-one-discredited-aspect-of-autism-facilitated-communication
And perhaps the popular and very closely named “Facilitated conversation” for people without communication impairment.
There’s also the “glass delusion” craze of the 16th-17th centuries, and the witch-hunting craze of the same time period. All of these are listed in Wikipedia under “culture-bound syndromes”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture-bound_syndrome
Come to think of it, one aspect of the “affirmative care” craze is perhaps a mixture of compassion and impatience. Imagine, for the sake of argument, that a child insists having been “born in the wrong body” of an earthling, feeling inside a true identity as a citizen of Mars. A therapist would be unable to help the patient look more like a Martian—no drugs are available to produce green skin, tentacles, and telepathic ability. But such treatment is available for a different sort of delusion.
I’ve been arguing in gay spaces for years that this trend of “gender affirming care” is anti-gay. There’s push back from the usual suspects but a lot of gay people feel the way I do.
Absolutely – gender identity ideology is utterly homophobic with its insistence on replacing “same-sex attraction” with “same-gender attraction”. The idea of a straight man identifying as a lesbian is outrageous, but to criticise it is to be “transphobic”.
The LGB Alliance, set up to fight for the rights of gay men, lesbians, and bisexual people, was virulently attacked from the moment it was launched. Last week it won a legal challenge to its charitable status brought by the dodgy pro-trans charity Mermaids (the first known instance of one charity attacking another in this way). During the hearings, many of Mermaids’ own failings were exposed in court resulting in the Charity Commission (who Mermaids were also bringing the lawsuit against) opening an investigation into them. A spectacular own goal that lead to Mermaids’ CEO leaving shortly afterwards although she denied that her departure was related to the courtroom fiasco.
I understand that there are 3 groups in the US that opine/set parameters for gender transition:
American Pediatric Association (which refuses to conduct a systematic analysis, a request that has come up for about 5 years); the American Endocrinology Society; and WPATH….World Professional Association of Transgender Health, which is in no small way, an activist group. The American Medical Association and other medical groups sing along. (The medical consensus that exists in the US is largely, I understand, a “consensus” driven consensus, not an evidence based one. )
As discussed in this post, the head of the Endocrinology group published a piece in the Wall Street Journal a few days ago which was called-out for its inaccuracies and dubiousness by 21 doctors, clinicians, and researches in Europe and US.
The Australian journalist Bernard Lane, whose substack you should subscribe to as it is excellent source of information on this topic, also discussed these 2 pieces in detail:
https://genderclinicnews.substack.com/p/blocked-and-retorted
Abigail Shrier suggested that SOGD found in so many puberal girls, was due to unhappiness/unease with their bodily changes. She suggested that a few decades ago that would express itself as Anorexia nervosa, and nowadays as SOGD.
It would be interesting to see if there is an inverse relation to the frequency of incidence of SOGD and Anorexia nervosa over time. I guess that would make a good subject for a thesis by a sociology student?
I fully agree Hammes is wrong, there is no ‘clear picture’ whatsoever (other than in the activists’ hermetic minds and hormone peddlers’ pockets).
“hermetic”
In case this went over anyone’s head – as it would have mine, some weeks ago –
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermeticism
This is a 2 minute video much worth watching……Helen Joyce and Peter Boghossian.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/EYJMY_2iFTM
Jordan Peterson’s was removed by YouTube for violating a “hate speech” rule – while everyone else’s interview – Shermer, Boghossian,..was left up.
When activists say “support our viewpoint, or else trans people will kill themselves”, isn’t that a type of blackmail? Isn’t it blackmail to say you will kill yourself unless someone else agrees with every single thing that you say?
Precisely – blackmail is a frequent approach in Critical Justice Theory.
Re the word “gender”.
I’ve written this before on these pages. I guess I’ll repeat it:
The notion of Gender is currently the source of some confusion. In the history of English, for example, the word “gender” was originally (and still is) used in the domain of linguistics. Many languages have markers that divide their nouns into different categories, sometimes based on semantic properties of the object, but oftentimes not. While many languages have a profusion of genders (for example, the Bantu languages of Central and Southern Africa; the Sinitic languages of East Asia), many others have only three, or even two (and some may have none). Many two-gendered languages are divided along “animate” and “inanimate’; such gender systems clearly wed gender to semantics. Others use the terms “masculine” and “feminine” (sometimes, also, a third, “neuter”), although assignation to one or another category is usually semantically arbitrary: there is, typically, no inherent property of an object or concept that determines whether it is linguistically masculine or feminine (or neuter) gender. Rather, the terms “masculine” and “feminine” here are just arbitrary markers, and bear little or no relation to men or women, males or females.
In English, grammatical gender is only present in the pronoun system (along with a small set of inanimate noun classes; for example, transportation vehicles often take the feminine), and it is here, in both English and certain other languages with (often more pervasive) masculine-feminine gender systems, that there is currently confusion, disagreement, and even some utterly distasteful hostility. As the word “sex” became ambiguous between denoting the male-female distinction and, later, the procreative/recreational activity, it has fallen out of favor in some circles when referring to the former, and the word “gender” stepped in to replace it, “sex” being used primarily for (sexual) activity itself. Most recently though, the term “gender” has been cleaved from the male-female system and deployed for a new one, that of how one feels “on the inside”—as a man (boy) or as a woman (girl)—ostensibly independent of sex. This new usage, in a state of linguistic flux, is now somewhat controversial psychologically, socially, politically, and yes, scientifically. But despite its scientifically unsettled status, there is little reason for controversy elsewhere.
Gender in transportation vehicles brought a smile. I can imagine the following interview between, say, a columnist from The New Yorker and a rural “car guy” up the Ottawa Valley.
“Tell me about your car, Mr. Rath. It sounds loud even idling.”
“ ‘Kay, now, she’s ‘69 Chevy with a 396, fuelie heads and a Hurst on the floor. Got her just tuned up, she sounds’ real good, eh?”
“How fast will it go?
“Oh, I figger she’ll do zero to sixty in like 4 and a half seconds.”
“Have you won any races with it?”
“Nah. I had ‘er down to Cayuga Speedway last spring but she blew a valve and I had to wait for parts from Muncie before I could tear ‘er down, eh?”
“I’m sorry to hear it broke down on the track after that long drive down for you.”
“Oh well. ‘Em’s the breaks. She’s only a car, eh. G’day now.”
Clearly only one speaker here is using the feminine gender for the transportation vehicle. The other would have felt self-conscious or even patronizing. This free fluidity of gender would never be accepted in French. Une voiture est toujours une voiture.
+1 for the Boss reference.
This is clear, and I could understand everything you wrote until the last sentence. Please could you elaborate?
Hi Stephen. Does your query pertain to my last sentence, or Leslie’s French? If mine, this is actually just an excerpt from a longer post of mine. Well, here it is:
https://seedyroad.com/diversions/transienttriangle.htm
Mitten (not Mitren) Drinnen
Yes yours Mitten, thanks.
Thank you. I asked in a comment above.
Wow – so “he”, “she” are linguistically distinct – full stop?
And male/female electrical connections, perhaps another example.
This is what I was looking for.
You know, the he/she thing I thought meant it was referring to the intrinsic maleness/femaleness of a person. Seems an illusion.
Oh and some good literature on this would be appreciated, thanks.
Hi Thyroid, The Wikipedia entry seems pretty accurate; it might get a bit technical at “Related Linguistic Concepts”. Keep in mind that where it says, “”Genders are classes of nouns reflected in the behaviour of associated words,” “behavior” refers to grammatical behavior, not real-world behavior.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_gender
Took my 14 year old son to update his vaccinations. The nurse gave him a gender questionnaire to fill out and then interviewed him in private. What??? Will definitely not comply next time…
In exasperation, I have to comment:
“Gender”, and even sex : malleable in a deliberate direction.
Hair, eye color : malleable, deliberately so.
Skin color, hair texture, vocalizations, expressions : …?…
Given the above, I have to reexamine, why aren’t those other things malleable, and in a deliberate direction?
Had to say it. Thank you.
Sex is not malleable.
I am always astonished at the ferocity of trans activists’ responses to the simple assertion that there are only two sexes. JK Rowling is a high profile recipient of abuse, but I first read about it in Alice Dreger’s wonderful “Galileo’s Middle Finger.” They’re zealots.