Finding the Bedrock

Truth is harder to bear than ignorance, and so ignorance is valued more—also because the status quo depends on it; but love depends on self-knowledge, and self-knowledge depends on being able to bear the truth. ~Andrea Dworkin (1)

The past several years have been something of a wild ride. If I experienced some kind of psycho-spiritual awakening around 2011–2013, which changed my perspective utterly and for the better, I was completely unprepared for the far more rude awakening that was to come in 2016. Just when I had found my voice, and the courage to start this blog, the new foundations I’d worked to create were ripped from under my feet, and I’ve not been the same since.

I’ve been dwelling with cognitive dissonance, knowing that I have beliefs and knowledge that is right, yet still feeling undermined and unable to speak. And writing, telling my story, initially had such a positive impact on my sense of self, that to have my voice constrained has led to a worsening of my health and wellbeing, and a greater feeling of isolation, not just from others, but also from my own soul needs. 

In his wonderful, wise book, Earth Grief: The Journey Into and Through Ecological Loss, the late Stephen Harrod Buhner says:

It matters, deeply, the quality of the thoughts (and style of thinking) we take as our own. Some deepen our sense of self, strengthen the best in us, connect us more deeply to truth, to Earth, to our humanness and moral center. Others do quite the opposite. And it is how we feel as we let those thoughts become our own that tells us which is which – specifically, the response of the heart to the touch of those linguistic meanings upon us. And that feeling response leads always to what is behind or underneath those meanings – the psychological and epistemological orientation of the one or ones who composed them. Thus, to allow the thoughts of others to take up residence inside us without a simultaneous discernment of their character or analysis of their nature is often unwise. (2)

Thus, in order to analyse the nature of the ideas that have disoriented me, I have decided it is time to step out of silence to tell this particular story, though it will be far from perfect, and likely to be misunderstood, and perhaps will result in a loss of followers. Yet I’d rather you, dear reader, knew the truth, so you can make up your own mind.

I’ve tried to broach this topic before, but indirectly, veiling it in more generalised terms, in Wings are a Constraint: The Gift of Limitations, and one of my most read posts, The Sacredness of What Is.

The issue that has destabilised and confused and wounded me goes by various names, and is entangled with many cultural beliefs and phenomena, not least a fear of embodied life. It is transgenderism / gender identity ideology / trans rights activism / identity politics, and it is connected with postmodernism and queer theory (which, by the way, has little to nothing to do with LGB people), transhumanism, porn culture, the medical and pharmaceutical industries, and the social problems that have arisen from the online world (amongst other things). 

To a large extent it is a backlash against feminism, being based on sexist stereotypes, and expressing deep-rooted misogyny and homophobia. But it has also clearly emerged from the human separation from nature, and the trauma and dissociation that we all feel, consciously or otherwise. 

In many ways I stand firm in my understanding of reality, which is something that cannot be taken away from me, since it does not require belief, but simply being. Yet I am an introverted, sensitive person, who often has weak boundaries, and am inclined to self-doubt, so the warped energy and ideas that are emanating from the dominant culture have a damaging effect. So I need to openly express my views on this issue for my own wellbeing.

One of the hallmarks of gender identity ideology (GII) and queer theory (QT) is obfuscation. Words that had clear meanings until recently have now been redefined into unintelligibility, in a deliberate attempt to confuse and distort. Thus, it’s essential that I define the main terms:

Sex = reproductive class = female/male, woman/man, girl/boy

Gender = sex role stereotypes (i.e. sexism) = feminine/masculine

Biological sex is a material reality. Humans, like all mammals, are sexually dimorphic, and sex cannot be changed. Gender, on the other hand, is socially/culturally constructed, and is the roles, expectations and behaviours that are imposed upon us based on our sex.

Gender is not the straightforward assertion that some people play with dolls while others play with trucks; it is the assertion that playing with dolls is an inferior pastime to playing with trucks. It is the additional assertion that doll-playing people who play with trucks are deviant, and vice versa, and that this deviance must be punished with social sanction. In this way it creates a hierarchy between doll playing people and truck playing people. 

…

You may have noticed that I said “gender” and not “gender oppression”. Gender creates hierarchies with unjust power differentials; it is oppression. People are not oppressed “on the basis of gender”, they are oppressed by gender. Gender, like class, has two relative positions, whatever Mark Zuckerberg tells you: up and down. Powerful and exploited. Fully human and non-person. ~Marina S (3)

Transgenderism and the ‘queer’ movement seem hellbent on confusing, distorting and conflating the distinction between sex and gender—in fact, inverting it in two ways: firstly, by claiming that males, who occupy the superior position in the hierarchy, by ‘identifying as women,’ suddenly become marginalised and oppressed (and women become the oppressors!); and by claiming that gender (‘identity’) is natural and innate, while sex (biology) is constructed and therefore doesn’t even exist!

Anyone who has delved even slightly into this issue will know how complex and fraught it is, and people get very emotional, so please note that my issue is with the ideology rather than individuals. I do not wish hate on anyone, and in fact feel a great deal of concern for the people (especially children) who have been caught up in this movement. That is, in fact, why so many women (and some men) are speaking out against GII—because we care about the harm being done to vulnerable people, and we want it to stop.

As Renée Gerlich says:

This system of gender does not operate through persuasive reasoning, but through the power of identification rooted in pain … Gender lodges itself into us through a culturally normalised rape epidemic, and through our childhood stress and vulnerability. (My emphasis in bold) (4)

Many other people have written and spoken about this issue in far more effective ways that I ever will, and with far more expertise, so what I say below is merely a personal exploration, with the aim of lightening the load from my mind, so perhaps I can breathe freely and be myself once more.

Foundations 

What if all our efforts toward liberation are determined by an ideology which despite our desire for a better world leads us inevitably back to the old paradigm of suffering? ~Susan Griffin (5)

One of the ironically amusing consequences of trans rights activism (TRA) is that many women are being pushed towards radical feminist theory, or at least a more critical feminism than the mainstream, liberal type (which does not have women’s best interests at heart). Meaning ‘root,’ the radical in radical feminism urges us to peel back the layers of culture and our own assumptions to discover and address the root causes of problems. This is a way of thinking that I have tried to apply to many things, from my own health, to ecological issues, to cultural exploration. Though a never-ending and imperfect process, I keep trying to find the bedrock, and let that support me. 

From this radical perspective there is a way of understanding reality that I believe is helpful, even crucial—that of foundational versus constructed reality.

What is primary/foundational is Earth, nature, life processes (biology and ecology) and natural laws (such as gravity); and what is secondary/constructed is civilisation, cultures, lifestyles, ideologies and belief systems. Constructed reality is entirely dependent on foundational reality, and will collapse if foundational reality is damaged (which is the situation we find ourselves in now). In simplistic terms, this is the difference between nature and culture, which, when balanced, forms a whole (i.e. it need not be conceived dualistically). The closer culture is to nature, and the more intertwined, the healthier and more sustainable it will be (hence, traditional, nature-based cultures are wiser than Western/industrialised culture, which is distanced from nature).  

This macrocosmic view can also be understood microcosmically. Foundational reality is the body, our biology, and all the things about us that we can’t change, including our sex, skin colour, date of birth, etc; whereas constructed reality is our cultural/social identities, beliefs, ideologies, values (and in some circumstances, even feelings), all of which are dependent on the foundational reality of our bodies.

Never is the body allowed to forget its origins. When it is allowed to forget, it often starts making fanciful demands. When it is constantly reminded, it knows its place. ~Sadhguru (6)

While things are complex, and there is some interpenetration, what really matters is that we don’t get these realities mixed up. Yet unfortunately, for too long humans have (mis)understood things dualistically, seeing civilisation and our lifestyles as what is most real, denying our dependence on, and attempting to control, Earth and ecological systems. And now individuals are making the same mistake, taking ideology and ‘feelings’ as truth, and denying the very foundations of their bodies.

TRAs (and men’s rights activists) will often respond by claiming that feminism itself is an ideology, yet this is not the case, as Renée Gerlich makes clear:  

Feminist theory is distinct from fundamentalist ideologies precisely because it does not begin with a set of rigid, pre-constructed concepts, but with women’s subjective experience and commitment to humanisation shared in consciousness raising … It is constantly shaped and re-shaped as women pose questions about our lives and notice the patterns our experiences form. These patterns combine to form analysis, and this analysis is dynamic, changing as the times change. But the simple premise of women’s humanity, from which women’s experience arises and is spoken, does not change – because it is a premise based on love and observation, not dogma. (7)

Though part of constructed reality, feminist theory still emerges from and relates to foundational reality, and ultimately to our very beingness as female humans, experiencing the world in a certain way. Radical feminism excavates close to the bedrock and sets up a solid foundation for understanding ourselves and the world. And because it was created by women, for women and girls/children, it has emerged separately from the patriarchal system that it critiques, and is therefore more trustworthy. It has the vision of a better, truer world at its core.

Gaslighting

… an ideology holds the promise that one may control reality with the mind, assert the ideal as more real than reality, or place idea as an authority above nature, and even above our sensual experience of nature: what we see, what we hear, what we feel, taste, smell. ~Susan Griffin (8)

In 2017 I attended an International Women’s Day event. There was dance, and song, and women speaking their truth. There was a presentation about the origin and meaning of the word c***. All wonderful … until the end, when the presenters discussed how they had asked themselves the question, What is a woman? and the answer they decided upon was, Anyone who identifies as a woman.

I found this alarming, dispiriting, and also completely untrue—it is circular reasoning, and therefore not a definition at all. 

Women are adult human females, and girls are juvenile human females. We do not need to identify as such, for we simply are. It’s an embodied, biological reality with specific experiences and consequences attached.

Kelly-Jay Keen aka Posie Parker's iconic design

It’s ludicrous that this question is even being asked, for sex differences are perceived (in the vast majority of cases), immediately upon seeing a person. It’s something we have evolved to be able to do. Babies can do it. Animals can do it. Sex is often still easy to perceive even in people who have ‘transitioned’ medically. Reality is not easy to hide.

Yet the other dispiriting aspect of this is the question that isn’t being asked: What is a man?—It seems that that definition is settled and the category closed. Womanhood, on the other hand, is now an open category that non-women—i.e. men—can identify into, appropriate and colonise.

TiMs [trans-identified males] are the “settlers” of the latest patriarchal colonization project. ~Nina Paley (9)

That men would attempt to do this is perhaps not so big a surprise (as boundary violations are a core part of the patriarchal system), but that many women, and society in general, are acquiescing to this as if it is an entirely reasonable demand is what boggles the mind. We cannot address sexism or even have a feminist movement, let alone protect women and children, if we cannot name the difference between females and males.

We’re being asked to disbelieve the evidence of our eyes and ignore our gut instincts. We’re being asked to accept a lie as truth. This is gaslighting on a mass scale.

I oppose gaslighting. I oppose requiring others to deny the evidence of their own eyes and identify someone else as a sex they are not. Not because trans-identified males don’t “deserve” to be called women. But because they aren’t women. “Woman” is not a club or a prize or a reward. It’s a sex. ~Nina Paley (10)

The consequence of allowing men to identify as women, is that women-only spaces (and sports, awards, scholarships, facilities, etc) cease to exist. This is, in fact, the very reason why I became aware of GII back in 2016. I was told that to exclude TiMs from women’s spaces was transphobic, meaning that I, and thus all women, could not say no to any man who wanted entry, not just to our spaces, but also to our bodily reality. This is an extreme violation, and pure misogyny, for female-only spaces are an absolute necessity for a whole host of reasons. 

When the transexual [now transgender] forces his way into the few private spaces women may enjoy and shouts down their objections, and bombards the women who will not accept him with threats and hate mail, he does as rapists have always done. ~Germaine Greer (11)

The idea of ‘self-identification’ that is now being proposed and legislated in various states and countries not only threatens the safety, privacy and dignity of women and girls, and makes child and disability safeguarding impossible, it’s also offensive and abusive. Women have had to fight long and hard for rights and protections that are now being wound back at the say so of a small number of men. As if we don’t matter at all. As if we are merely ideas that can be swept aside and forgotten. As if the male idea of women is more real than our material reality.

But our bodies are real, and they matter. More and more is being learned about sex differences in the study of genetics and physiology. Charlene Spretnak says:

It is now clear that—at every organizational level of the human body, from genes and cells to organs to the whole organism—sex differences shape our reality appreciably. 

…

As Janine A. Clayton, director of N.I.H.’s Office of Research on Women’s Health, [explains], “Each cell is either male or female, and that genetic difference results in different biochemical processes within that cell.” 

Our species, like others, is dimorphic down to the cellular level, regardless of what sort of gender identity one decides to adopt and maintain. (12)

It is essential, for women’s health, and our physical, psychological and spiritual wellbeing, that we are able to bring these differences into the light, rather than obscure them and consent to our erasure. And in order to do that it is crucial that we hold onto our language, our words—female, woman, girl, mother, and all words relating to female anatomy and experience.

Disturbingly, GII is also gaslighting and indoctrinating children. In order to show children how to understand the world and to begin to talk with and about it, language must be taught. This begins with labelling and categorising, as Paul Shepard spells out,

the skill of discriminating and naming without which no meaningful speech or higher cognition can take place. Naming at first involves body parts and then animals because anatomy is fundamental to all identity: body parts are the supreme objects for learning the skills of taxonomy. (My emphasis in bold) (13)

Renée Gerlich relates how Sadhguru says

that “the fundamental nature of the intellect is to discriminate,” to distinguish x from y and a from b. “This discriminatory quality is very important for survival. If you want to break a stone, you have to discriminate between the stone and your finger, otherwise you will break your finger.” (14)

Likewise, we need to be able to discriminate between males and females. Adults have a responsibility to name reality, which includes our sexed bodies, accurately, so as to ground children in actuality. GII, on the other hand, tells children that some boys are actually girls, and some girls are actually boys, and that some people are both/neither. It deliberately undermines categories, and creates the lie that sex can be altered. The adults promoting this ideology are letting children down, and contributing to an already overwhelming culture of confusion and body dissatisfaction. No wonder so many children, particularly girls, are now identifying as trans or non-binary.

Both/And

The deluded mind must try to remake the world after an illusion. ~Susan Griffin (15)

When I first became aware of the trans movement I rather naïvely interpreted it in a metaphorical, Jungian way as being about inner states of being, the feminine anima or masculine animus that are said to be part of our psyches. I saw no harm in delving into exploration of these inner parts, and perhaps playing with outer manifestations in clothing, appearance or behaviour, in order to integrate them and find wholeness. 

But I was entirely wrong about the aims of transgenderism, which seems unable to understand metaphor or symbol, and instead literalises and concretises these ideas. That which I thought would be playful and exploratory (as I think it indeed was in the 80s and 90s), is now deadly serious and overly black and white in its approach. As Jungian analyst Lisa Marchiano writes, ‘[a] delusion is play that has become stuck,’ and:

To live a life awakened to individual meaning, we must take psyche’s voice seriously.

To take something seriously, however, does not mean taking it literally. There is a space in between where metaphor proliferates, and curiosity is cultivated. If we cannot access the in between, we either reject expressions of soul as mere delusion, or we take such expressions concretely. (16) 

It seems to me that many people today seem stuck in over-literalised, either/or thinking, rather than the both/and, liminal perspective that is healthier and also far more interesting. They are gravitating towards outdated and often harmful sexist stereotypes as the basis for their identities, rather than engaging curiously with their inner feelings and needs. There is no room here for paradox, or uncertainty, or ongoing explorations that are more about the journey than the destination. No room for knowing dancing with unknowing. As Marchiano states, ‘[c]oncretizing feelings by medicalized body alteration is likely to mean that the subtle messages from the unconscious are not being engaged symbolically,’ (17) and this is a tragedy for human development and our sense of self.

This literalisation extends to the concept of ‘equality,’ which many young women and activists today seem to interpret as ‘sameness,’ assuming that women and men are no different. To speak facts about sex differences (for example, that men are generally bigger and stronger than women), is confronting to them, for to assert differences is to imply inequality. Never mind that other cultures seem able to comprehend an ‘equality of difference,’ and that the goal of feminism isn’t equality, anyhow, but liberation. (This confusion is in part due to the fact that QT is literally being sold back to young women as feminism!) 

This either/or, oversimplified thinking is made even worse by the deliberate confusion, distortion and conflation of sex and gender at the heart of GII. It claims to be a progressive movement that is ‘smashing the binary’ or allowing people to be their ‘authentic selves’ by asserting their gender identities. Yet this is a flaw in the comprehension of self, for gender is the problem, not the solution, and the reality of the sexed body does not cease to exist just because we want it to. 

Ultimately GII is regressive. Rather than understanding that our sex does not determine our personalities, and that we can reject (as far as possible under patriarchy) the impositions of gender—to be truly gender non-conforming—it asserts that our personalities (now called ‘gender identities’) actually determine our sex—which amounts to gender conformity. This is not only a literalisation of Cartesian mind/body dualism, with mind cancelling out body, it also means that while we might think we have liberated ourselves from the gender hierarchy, we have actually just reinforced it.

Many progressives see this as a war of the new against the old, of enlightened values struggling against outmoded beliefs and prejudices. But if looked at with a less “cultured” or ideologically entrenched eye, it appears to be more of a war of culture against nature, or mind against body.

…

The neoliberal sorcery of identity politics revolves around an unquestionable belief in the sanctity of identity. Its aims have to do with endless ideological renovations, technological extensions, and cosmetic furnishings of the cage. What they never address is the possibility or desirability of leaving the cage behind entirely. ~Jasun Horsley (18)

The so-called ‘gender binary,’ like all dualisms, is a hierarchy, with male/masculine positioned as superior to female/feminine, along with many other perceived opposites (a useful table can be found on Jane Clare Jones’ blog). Importantly, in dualistic systems, there isn’t just an assertion of superiority of one side over the other, there is also a denial of that side’s dependence on the inferiorised other. Thus, constructed reality/culture denies and ignores its dependence on foundational reality/nature, and men deny their dependence, indeed their very existence, on women.

I particularly hate the phrase ‘smash the binary’ (and think ‘dualism’ is the more accurate term), but as it’s the phrase TRAs and queer theorists use, the way that you ‘smash the binary’ is not by erasing sex differences and replacing them with some kind of gender-fluid fairytale land of indistinctness where everyone lives happily ever after. What you do is you recognise difference and elevate the ‘inferior other’ into its own reality and value; i.e. you eliminate hierarchy and allow definition. Feminist philosopher Jane Clare Jones explains this in her brilliant and hilarious way:

Instead of granting reality to both sides of the difference, and working to move our discursive structures away from the way our culture codes those differences, trans ideology has decided to try and abolish the difference itself. That they can’t grasp the distinction between ‘a difference’ and ‘a binary’ is demonstrated by the fact that they keep referring to the sexual difference between male and female humans – which is a difference in kind between two types of humans – as ‘a binary,’ or even worse, as the ‘gender binary.’ (*Headdesk*). What is so interesting – and distressing – about all of this, is that this act of not grasping that a difference-exists-which-is-not-a-binary, is structured by the basic patriarchal conceit which underpins the whole binary structure in the first place. That is, the inability of the patriarchal subject to relate to anything that differs from itself in [sic] without imposing its own projections onto it. As we’re all well aware from our interactions out there, what informs this inability to grant reality to a difference – and to allow that the purportedly ‘inferior’ term of a ‘binary’ might exist as its own difference – is good old fashioned patriarchal narcissism. A way of relating to anything that differs to itself only through an inverting mirror – and that cannot conceive there could be any other way of relating across difference. (19)

Illogically, GII and QT would have us believe that categories can be redefined and blurred—‘queered’—out of determinability and even existence. Derived from ‘the acid of postmodernism: the thesis that nothing has meaning because everything is language,’ (20) QT posits that language constructs reality, so if we just change language, reality changes. Thus, a thing is bad only because we say it is. And sexism exists because biological sex was ‘invented,’ so if it is ‘uninvented,’ it becomes a thing of the past. Bonkers!

GII/QT seem to think that the erasure of difference is a good thing, as if dominant power structures and oppression can be magicked out of existence by the linguistic wizardry of redefined words, self-declared identities and preferred (in fact compelled) pronouns, but the result is actually very sinister, and it is women and girls who are bearing the brunt. Jones says:

… the whole point of trying to abolish sexual difference is to allow the being of female people to be easily appropriated by male people. It is, in fact, the existence of sexual difference that serves as the basis for resisting the patriarchal binary, because it is the existence of sexual difference which grounds the claim that the female has its own being, outside the definition imposed upon it by patriarchal opposition. (21)

While GII and QT claim to be about difference and diversity, in my eyes all this obfuscation tends towards homogenisation, erasing not just women, but also lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and other gender non-conforming people. The TQ has been added to the LGB initialism, resulting in a conflation of these ideas/identities in people’s understanding, despite them being entirely separate things: sexual orientation, which is material and sex-based versus transgender/‘queer,’ which is based on subjective feelings and immaterial identities that deny sex (and therefore deny sexual orientation too, hence its homophobic nature). 

My understanding is that most lesbians, gays and bisexuals reject the word ‘queer,’ still finding it insulting and traumatising, however much it has been ‘reframed’ by queer discourse. It is an ideology that is being imposed upon them, redefining what they are and how they can define themselves, while also allowing heterosexuals to identify into the category. Thus, ‘queer’ ceases to have any particular meaning—other than a desire to transgress.

But it is one thing to question and challenge oppressive social norms and boundaries ‘in the interests of ‘humanisation' and solidarity with the oppressed,’ as feminism does, and quite another to ‘queer’ any and all norms and boundaries ‘to consolidate external power in co-operation with the oppressor,’ as QT does. (22) This speaks of a lack of respect for difference, and a lack of discernment between right and wrong, helpful and harmful, healthy and unhealthy. It’s also just plain silly, for life doesn’t work that way. Words do have meanings, and how we use them matters.

The most brilliant summation that I have read of this vexed issue is by Jonah Mix, from an article that has since been censored:

Queer theorists see the intimate connection between biological sex and oppression, and they react by dismantling the notion of biological sex; feminists see the intimate connection between biological sex and oppression, and they react by dismantling oppression. That’s the fundamental difference between liberals and radicals; one sacrifices truth to avoid confronting power, and one confronts power to avoid sacrificing truth. (23)

Indeed.

Suffering

If we cannot encounter our suffering, we cannot hope to discover the kernel of transformative potential within it. ~Lisa Marchiano (24)

Often, when women object to this new ‘queered’ version of reality, we are told to ‘be kind,’ because trans-identified people ‘just want to live their lives.’ This has the objective of not only stopping us from thinking, but also engaging our female socialisation to put others before ourselves (and note that the kindness only goes one way). Sadly, this is what tends to happen, and it explains why so many women are trans-allies. Yet ‘being kind’ should never mean submitting or acquiescing to something that is doing us harm.

Yet sacrifice of the self is everywhere viewed as the highest calling, and the more so for a woman, who must give every element of her life to others. Kindness is at all times counseled to women, who are called unnatural if not kind.

Yet how can a kindness that blights the life of even one—though it benefit others—be called good? Is it in fact kindness to sever oneself from one’s own desires? Mustn’t the imperative to protect all life encompass—even for a woman—her own? ~Rachel Kadish (25)

It happened to me. When arguing with someone over this issue I was told that I was being too intellectual, and not empathising with trans-identified people. There are a couple of problems with this:

1. The reason why I was trying to understand the issue intellectually, logically, and based on evidence was because I’d had an emotional reaction—I was in shock. My emotions and gut instincts were intensely aroused, telling me that something was wrong, and that I needed to figure out what it was. (And rational thinking and emotion always interact, anyhow.) 
2. It seemed to imply that I shouldn’t think (because maybe I’d see through the ideology to the truth, which wouldn’t be acceptable.)

It is thinking, after all (which for a long time women were not even allowed or considered able to do)—theorising and analysing and talking about our experiences to move toward understanding—which led feminists to develop a critique of gender in the first place. But all our thoughts and knowledge are undone by a movement which 

takes the feminist critique of gender as a method of maintaining power relations between the sexes, and distorts it into an argument that biological sex in general, and females in particular, do not exist except as linguistic constructs and modes of social performance. ~Renée Gerlich (26)

But this is also particularly galling for me because the accusation of not being kind enough implies that I do not understand, when the truth is that like the vast majority of women, I do understand. Body dissatisfaction and discomfort, even dysmorphia, is pretty much the norm for women and girls in our culture, especially since the arrival of the internet, social media, selfies, porn culture, and the ubiquitous objectification of women’s bodies in the media. As Sarah Braun says in an Instagram post: 

In girls and women…

Gender dysphoria 

=

Body dysmorphia (27)

Dysmorphia is not a condition or mental illness, but an understandable symptom of a misogynistic society. 

Though I have only recently named it as such, I have suffered from a kind of facial/body dysmorphia from adolescence, since the time I was becoming ill with CFS/ME. At that time I felt an indescribable wrongness about my body and selfhood, which was in part tied to the expectations of femininity, and how I felt that I didn’t live up to it, on top of the confusing new reality of illness. I knew that the gendered expectations imposed upon women/girls were unjust and unnatural, so I was not entirely taken in by them, yet they did, and still do, cause a great deal of discomfort.

So, when a trans-identified person says that they were ‘born in the wrong body,’ I know exactly what they are talking about, and how excruciatingly painful it is, to want to be different, or even somebody else. But I also know that, ultimately, it isn’t true, nor is it possible, and that it is not ‘kind’ at all to affirm their incorrect belief.

A major part of the problem with GII is that it has pathologised and then medicalised discomfort. The ‘dysphoria’ in so-called ‘gender dysphoria’ simply refers to a sense of dissatisfaction and distress, and this always has a cause—and it’s not, as TRAs would say, that a person was ‘born in the wrong body’ or that the wrong sex was ‘assigned at birth.’ The logical and ethical action would be to find the cause of the discomfort, and figure out how it can be treated or managed (and quite often the cause stems from trauma, bullying, eating disorders and autism, amongst other things, often in combination.) Yet the affirmative approach bypasses this exploration and sets people, even young children, on the path to medical transition without a proper investigation of what is actually going on. This despite the fact that ‘[i]f we have to change our bodies in order to challenge gender norms, we are not transcending gender,’ (28) and we will just entrench the overall discomfort, feeding the wider cultural problem.

Like Renée Gerlich, I see this as part of a larger obstacle that is affecting humanity as a whole:

In a world where rape, prostitution, online porn, and mainstream media objectification are rife, dissociation is a collective cultural issue, not just an individual trauma response. These factors combine and compound one another to create a climate of male sexual entitlement, body hatred, dissociation, dysphoria and anorexia – and these are the disaster conditions that transgenderism exploits. They cause enough disorientation and split-self thinking to allow capitalism to advance into more intimate territory – from the commons and Indigenous lands to the unions, to sexuality, to sexual anatomy itself. (29)

There is so much collective trauma that has emerged as a product of the dominant culture that many of us, feeling unable to face our suffering and pain, dissociate, and/or pursue superficial, false solutions.

The notion that suffering is something that needs to be alleviated by fixing the externals is central to the transgender movement, as well as to neoliberalism, identity politics, and all modern Western values that elevate personal preference over every other factor. This turning away from internal states of suffering to external pseudo-solutions (which are often really distractions) creates the sort of messed up culture of exploitation we are living in. It is a world where no one wants to just sit in the distress of being poisoned by generations of abuse, but instead rushes to surgically remove the offending parts, or worse, take them out on–or put them into–someone else. ~Jasun Horsley (30)

It is understandable that many young people are gravitating towards these external solutions, because the pain they are feeling is simply too great to just sit with and endure. And yet as difficult as it may be, the way out can only be through the suffering. It can’t be bypassed. But as a culture we have yet to find widespread ways to support people to do this.

It must also be pointed out that transgenderism is an iatrogenic condition—it has been created by the medical system, via the invention of various forms of cosmetic surgery and synthetic hormones—for in the neoliberal world, ‘[n]ew cures demand new “diseases,”’ (31) and there is money to be made.

With the advance of transgenderism, the fact of biological sex is rhetorically ploughed over and substituted with the cash crop of ‘gender identity’. ~Renée Gerlich (32)

These surgeries and wrong-sex hormones not only destroy the integrity of the body, doing real physical harm and inducing disease states, but pharmaceuticals are also a huge source of pollution and toxicity with serious ecological implications. To manufacture medicalised identities that require treatment and drugs—for life!—is unethical, unsustainable and ecologically disastrous. 

That I went through the worst of my own confusion and pain in the late 90s is something I now thank my lucky stars for, for if I was growing up today I wonder if I would be lured towards the false promises of GII in some way. And yet I know that my younger self also possessed an earthbound wisdom that somehow kept me grounded amidst my distress, so that even in the depths of confusion and self-hatred, I still wanted my life. It is that earthly wisdom that continues to ground me today.

Embodied Life

The body is our first and last outward reality; it defines and conditions our life experience and gives us personal identity and continuity. ~Kay Turner (33)

Over the past several years as I have read books and pursued ideas, written stories and poems and made art, an ongoing theme has been that of embodiment. Not only of re-inhabiting and accepting my own flawed body, but a wider understanding of our place as biological beings living within the embrace of a living Earth and all of its complexity. This meant trying to move towards an embodied language to describe this—because ‘sensuality is intelligence … [and] sensual language is language that makes sense.’ (34)

Thus, while reading Stephen Buhner’s Earth Grief, I realised that, on top of the multitude of problems with GII, a core thing that I object to is the disembodiment of language. Buhner says:

To endure as a species, our language must become an integral expression of the ecological realities of this planet so that merely by speaking our conscious awareness is more fully embedded within those ecological realities. And this includes, always and most importantly, how we feel. The more dissociated our language becomes, the more we, and our species, are readying ourselves to fall. (35)

The ecological language that we need, if we are to evolve as human beings and survive beyond the unfolding collapse of everything that we know, needs to be based on what is real. This doesn’t mean a rationalist, objective or scientific approach, but rather that we speak from our bodies, from our feeling–thinking–soulful selves, as truthfully as we can, as well as poetically and metaphorically. We need to maintain the both/and perspective that acknowledges the different aspects of reality and ways of knowing, all of which arise from the foundation of Earth and our bodies, without over-simplifying or literalising.

What makes real understanding real is its connection with reality. Real understanding is dancing with Being—including one’s predators, one’s prey, and the shared world in which our lives and deaths unfold. ~Robert Bringhurst (36)

Woman, girl, female, sex—for me, these are embodied words that point to real states of being and incarnation; whereas words like gender, trans, queer, and the use of pronouns in contradiction of reality, point to … well, nothing. These words are abstracted, disembodied, artificial, and imposed upon a reality that they do not reflect.

Buhner mentions feelings, and he is right, we must use language to articulate how we truly feel as the antidote to disembodiment. But in the dissociated ideology of transgenderism (and science, economics and politics, etc), which places mind above body, ideas above foundational reality, feelings are distorted and misinterpreted. Discomfort and suffering is pathologised rather than seen as a normal, unavoidable, and potentially transformative part of life. And the lack of clarity that comes from QT has enabled these misunderstood feelings to emerge as a ‘virtual reality’ that is overriding embodiment and truth. 

Renée Gerlich makes a significant point when she says, quoting Sadhguru, that 

the identity that you take on [is] far more important than the nature of the intellect itself, because intellect is a slave of the identity that you have taken. Once you take a certain identity, intellect will function in a specific way, only towards that. (37) 

Our identifications and unquestioned assumptions skew our minds towards certain ways of thinking (and feeling). But we must remember that we are not identity labels or disembodied minds—even if trauma and dissociation makes us feel that way. We are our bodies, which include our minds, which, rather than being static things, are emergent, ongoing processes within and outside our bodies. Phenomenology shows us that mind and body are interwoven, and that all of our feeling–thoughts and thinking–feelings arise from our embodied perceptions and experiences. We are sensing–thinking-feeling beings embedded in an ecological world of interbeing.  

[Mind] is not a noun, not something that exists somewhere inside us. It is verb: something that occurs through our interactions with the world around us, a weave of immersion. ~David Hinton (38)

The mind is part of the body, the body is part of the world, and the world is part of the mind. ~Robert Bringhurst (39)

If the experience of the sexed body is felt as distressing, this is not the fault of the body itself, but of a particular belief or attitude towards it. A man who claims to ‘feel like a woman’ is having an embodied male experience, and vice versa. And we must look to the dominant culture that we are immersed in for the cause of such mistaken attitudes of mind. We must look to patriarchy, misogyny, gender, and the myth of human separation from and supremacy over nature.

Also important to acknowledge is that identity/personality itself is not something that can be completely self-created or -chosen. Like mind it also emerges from our embodied reality and our interactions with other people and the world around us, including all manner of ideas and beliefs (which may not always be accurate, and need constant questioning and exploration). I like to think of us having a variety of ‘self’ or ‘soul seeds’ within that enable us to grow into who we are, but that are influenced by the circumstances they happen to be planted in—rich or poor soil, too much or too little water, the presence of nutrients or toxins. We must make the best of the seeds we are given, and grow into our personalities regardless, even if that means being a bit stunted or misshapen in parts. That’s what makes us unique.

The spirit is within a body—it is the conscious experience of process within that body—and the spirit evolves, or is obstructed in its evolution, depending on the body’s experience of its material environment. ~Monica Sjöö & Barbara Mor (40)

 

Granted, there is a great deal of power to be found in self-naming and -defining, especially when aspects of our experience have not previously been articulable (and perhaps this partly explains the rise of all the new gender and sexual identity labels). I do also understand that people wish to call themselves ‘queer’ in order to mark themselves out as non-normative—for haven’t we all been there? Yet not everything that is considered normative in our culture is boring, or harmful, or shameful; and not everything that is non-normative or transgressive is necessary healthy, or helpful, or praiseworthy. Discernment is required, for as Susan Griffin so astutely puts it, ‘[a] rebellion ultimately imitates that which it rebels against, until the rebel comes to understand himself.’ (41)

In my eyes, homosexuality and gender non-conformity, while not majority norms, are still norms, so describing such identities as ‘queer,’ meaning non-normative, deviant, subversive, transgressive, and so forth, doesn’t make much sense. As humans we are all wildly unique, and also very much the same. We are idiosyncratic and entirely ordinary. We are both/and: our individuality is rooted in our sameness; our ordinariness creates the ground for our manifestation as remarkable beings. Anyone who expresses a queer identity seems to be afraid of normality, commonality, and the true diversity that makes everyone distinctive, no matter how ‘normative’ we may appear to be. Cultural norms that discriminate against people who are different must, of course, be challenged. But the outcome of that challenge should be more commonality, more acceptance, not the creation of a new class of people who define themselves in opposition to everyone else. 

We must also remember that to a large extent who we are and who we become is mostly out of our control. Nor, crucially, can we control how other people perceive us, or how they speak about us (consequently, I object to the compelled speech that is ‘preferred pronouns’).

Many women, myself included, have struggled to find our own self-understanding and -acceptance, so it is distressing that the goal of GII/QT seems to be our erasure, our un-defining, as we are subsumed, against our will, into a society that, while it may claim to be queer and gender-fluid, is really just the same old male-dominated culture that tells women—and men—what we can and cannot be. For all the rhetoric about ‘smashing the binary,’ we’re still trapped within the sexist system, and tinkering about with words, superficial forms of expression, and even extreme body-modification, ultimately changes nothing. We all still know what a man is, and what a woman is, and where they exist in the hierarchy, no matter who is wearing the lipstick and eyeshadow. 

We can bash ourselves against the brick wall of reality as much as we want, but eventually we’ll have to admit that we do indeed have bodies, and they can’t go through a solid barrier. The bruises are real. And yet rather than representing oppression, perhaps they are an intimation of possible liberation. Perhaps our suffering does contain ‘a kernel of transformative potential.’ 

Ecology and Soul

Our cultural resources have lost their integrity. They cannot be trusted. What is needed is not transcendence but “inscendence,” not the brain but the gene. ~Thomas Berry (42)

I suppose part of what felt particularly destabilising once I became aware of GII was how it pulled me away from soul, psyche, the imaginal realms, and ways of being that exist beyond our ordinary ways of experiencing the world. 

In the years prior to 2016 I had been exploring shamanism, animism, Jungian psychology, eco-literature, and a new understanding of spirituality. I had come to understand the porousness of the body, the way I can imagine myself into different ways of being and feeling, beyond the boundaries of my own skin. My body-mind was alive to metaphor and symbolism, and the manifestation of inner experiences. In those years my heart broke open, and I was so much more connected to the world around me, my dreams, ideas, intuition and imagination. But GII suddenly thrust me into an ugly political reality I had not been fully aware of, and my heart shut tight in self-defence.

As so much of the ‘gender critical’ opposition to GII takes a scientific and rationalist approach, I also became confused within myself. Were my beliefs in non-ordinary reality and the porosity of the body part of the problem? Could they even be construed as postmodern or ‘queer’ ideas? 

As part of my radical thinking process, I’ve been questioning this, for I’ll admit that the idea of ‘queering the boundaries’ does appeal to me in some respects, as a way of elucidating the interconnections and interpenetrations of numerous kinds that are indeed aspects of ecological (and spiritual) reality. From the food we eat, the air we breathe, and the way thunder vibrates inside our chests, to the way that thoughts are given to us by forests, and feelings from birdsong. In the way we symbiotically coexist with all of the microbes in our guts, lungs, and on our skin. Too, imagination, to some extent at least, knows no limits, and spirit is everywhere. Yet ‘[t]he interpenetration of opposites does not annihilate distinct categories,’ (43) and as I became more familiar with the aims of QT I knew that I had to think more critically and write more precisely about these things. 

In fact, the queer project reminds me very much of ecofeminist philosopher Val Plumwood’s critique of certain aspects of deep ecology:

There is an arrogance in failing to respect boundaries and to acknowledge difference which can amount to an imposition of self. Deep ecologists see themselves as ‘empowered to act on behalf of other beings’ by claims of merging … One may in certain situations claim without arrogance to act in solidarity with or on behalf of another through one’s own (always imperfect) understanding of that other’s situation, but one may not without arrogance assume that one is that other or knows that situation as does the other, that the other is transparent and encompassable by self without residue. Acknowledging the other’s boundary and opacity of being is part of respect for the other. It is the master consciousness which presumes to violate boundaries and claims to subsume, penetrate and exhaust the other, and such treatment is a standard part of subordination … (44) 

Paul Shepard echoes her when he says,

there is a movement among environmental philosophers to reenvisage the “self” to include plants, other animals, even the nonliving world. But maturity does not consist of the loss of one’s boundaries, a subjective prenatal universality. Normal development consists, rather, of sharpening the distinctions between the self and the other to clarify one’s identity. (45)

Even if the intention, in this instance, is good, this is still a way of thinking and acting that imposes the human onto nature, disregarding consent and denying differences, which amounts to the same old violation. It also potentially confuses our own sense of self.

Engaging in modes of connection with the natural world, nonhumans, and non-ordinary realities ought to be done with respect and humility, as well as the awareness that we do this through our human bodies, with their many limitations.

The mind/body split, disrespect for boundaries, and fear of the body and its many vulnerabilities and eventual death, are distinct features of the anthropocentrism and human exceptionalism/supremacy that are core elements of patriarchy, and they run strongly though GII. As Susan Hawthorne explains, ‘[o]nce the mind is dissociated from matter, all sorts of beliefs become possible’ as a ‘perceptual gap’ opens up in dominant knowledge systems. A ‘result of [this] perceptual gap is that it is possible to imagine immortality.’ (46) Thus, transgenderism is directly connected with transhumanism—the techno-utopian belief that humans can evolve beyond our body-minds and all their limitations, starting with our sex, and eventually conquering even our mortality. I don’t know about you, but I find the (albeit impossible) ambitions of transhumanism, to control or transcend the limitations of life itself, to be an expression of real evil. 

Did we mistakenly conclude centuries ago that infinite possibilities were our reward for escaping our beasthood? ~Paul Shepard (47)

As I said at the beginning, I believe that these ideas are rooted in a fear of embodied life, which includes a fear of vulnerability and death—the truth that we are animals who are, in the end, mortal and edible. And whether this stems from monotheism or scientific rationalism or the myth of progress is largely irrelevant. We are afraid, and fear makes us want to control nature and our bodies. But, as Buhner says,

all attempts at control result in unintended and unexpected side effects. The more complex and far reaching the technology that is used, the more complex and far reaching the side effects. And those side effects will always need other interventions that then create more unforseen side effects that then need more interventions that … and it just keeps on and on and on and that is why everything always turns out so wrong. (48)

This controlling, anti-ecological, death-fearing, mind-over-matter, humans-over-nature, character of GII was something I perceived immediately, and forms a large part of my objection to it. Hence, I am especially alarmed at how many ecological/environmental thinkers/writers/activists have a pro-GII or QT stance. I’ve noticed that some even call themselves ‘queer ecologists,’ and while there may be certain philosophical and linguistic reasons why this is appealing, to me it seems oxymoronic and hypocritical.

There’s also a huge contradiction here, for while QT wants to erase boundaries, GII simultaneously creates false boundaries by separating mind and body and defining them as in conflict. No wonder this is all so confusing! We really seem to have lost touch with what is.

Our failure to understand that we are the eaten as well as those who eat is the strongest indication of our lack of understanding of our embeddedness in this ecological scenario we call Earth. The foundational truth of this planet is ecological. It cannot be escaped no matter what technological, utopianistic (or monotheistic) fantasies are put forth asserting that we can. We are ecological beings on an ecological planet. We are expressed out of Earth, we live embedded within that scenario, are of that scenario, and to Earth all of us, sooner or later, will return. Like all life, we are both the killers and the prey. We are meant to be eaten, sooner or later, by one thing or another. ~Stephen Harrod Buhner (49)

Our bodies, in some ways, are not really ours at all, but Earth’s. They are a gift. It is arrogance to think we can alter them using poisonous medical technologies and therefore transcend their limits. As Thomas Berry said, ‘[s]ome ancient force in the Western psyche seems to perceive limitation as a demonic obstacle to be eliminated, rather than as a strengthening discipline.’ (50)

Perhaps, as a woman living with a chronic illness, I have a better understanding of limitations than many people, because my body-mind does indeed create physiological and cognitive constraints that I must heed. Perhaps I am prepared to defer to the limits of body and ecology more willingly than most. 

My own belief is that we find who we are in the fertile space between possibility and limitation. 

Wings are a constraint that makes it possible to fly. ~Robert Bringhurst (51)

Of course, some limitations, such as gender, are unjustly imposed upon us, and should be challenged. Yet true gender non-conformity must come from acknowledgement and acceptance of the immutable reality of our sex (limitation), and our noncompliance with sexist stereotypes (possibility)—not from a denial of the reality of sex and identification with sexist stereotypes. Yet that’s what the topsy-turvy ideology of gender identity would have us believe.

But GII makes the claim that this is about ‘authenticity’—that we must allow people to become their ‘true selves.’ Some even claim that the reason they are trans is that they have a ‘gendered soul’ that differs from the sex of their body. Mind over matter, becomes soul over matter. Yet more dualistic, either/or thinking.

I’ll admit that soul is something that I do believe in … and yet, my conception of it does not comprehend it as human-shaped at all, let alone gendered or sexed. Much like mind, I think it is something we are immersed in, that can and does extend into the world. I feel that our souls are small parts of the larger soul of Earth or Cosmos, singular, yet still part of the whole.

I’m partial to Thomas Berry’s concept of ‘a primary biological identity,’ (52) and what he calls ‘inscendence’: ‘a descent into our pre-rational, our instinctive, resources’—our species’ unique genetic coding. (53) I also love his assertion that ‘the physical and the spiritual are two dimensions of the same thing.’ (54) This, alongside Bill Plotkin’s notion of soul as our ‘uniquely individual natures,’ (55) or our ‘psycho-ecological niche,’ (56) suggests that soul is a wild, biological and ecological reality, rather than anything supernatural or separate from our embodied selves. While it is inside us, in our very earthly materiality, it’s also something that we move through and live within. 

When Robert Bringhurst says ‘[m]eaning is not a thing; it is a relationship,’ (57) I wonder if it would be equally true to say soul, mind and body are not things; they are relationships. 

Some say the soul informs the body. But what if we were to imagine for a moment that the body informs the soul, helps it adapt to mundane life, parses, translates, gives the blank page, the ink, and the pen with which the soul can write upon our lives? ~Clarissa Pinkola Estés (58)

 

The body gives us certain limitations, the soul certain possibilities (and vice versa), and they interact, they relate, they inform one another, carrying messages between the physical and spiritual dimensions that are different, but also, as Berry says, the same thing. In this mix too is mind, another distinct entity that is integrated into the wholeness of our existence as human beings. 

Any dichotomy of bodily activities on the one hand and intellectual and spiritual ones on the other is fallacious in the process of conveying meaning. We are totally sexual, for all that we do is done as woman … or man. We do not have bodies; we are bodies in a most real sense. The highest spiritual acts of our lives demand bodily means to express them unless we would become disembodied spirits, and then, of course, we would not longer experience human spirituality. To express spiritual consciousness we must employ the body, and in this sense the body is holy symbol. (My emphasis in bold) ~Dorothy H. Donnelly (59)

We need to hold on to our wholeness, rather than succumb to the fragmentation of self that GII represents. We need to stop putting mind and soul above matter as Western culture has done for far too long, and we need to re-conceptualise them both as aspects of our ecological embodiment, rather than as disembodied states of being that are valued over corporeal existence. Matter matters; it is enminded and ensouled, whole and holy.

All true wholeness, examined closely, is plurality. ~Paul Shepard (60)

My understanding is that while it may initially be necessary to put on the labels and identities of culture in order to grow up and find our place in the world, in the end we can only become our ‘true selves’ by casting off those labels and identities, and discovering and then identifying with our bedrock, our wild, psycho-ecological niche. We begin from Earth/soul, proceed into culture, and find our way back to Earth/soul once more—perhaps enabling a new, wiser culture to bloom from that return.

My own sense … is that individuation–the quest for self-knowing–is a journey inward that eventually dis-identifies with everything but the Soul. It begins with your family, as the song goes, but soon it comes down to race, sex, even species. So the idea that we can be whatever we feel like being, biologically, through a mixture of desire and technology, is a literalization and hence an inversion of the truth that we are infinitely more than our biology. It is a way of insisting that what we are is not something we have to discover, but something we get to choose. ~Jasun Horsley (61)

In his book Nature and the Human Soul, Bill Plotkin describes this as a movement from egocentric to soulcentric and ecocentric modes of being; from an (often pathological) adolescence, to genuine adulthood and elderhood. This process of maturation is a very rare occurrence for humans in the Western/industrialised world, because we are so much further from Earth and soul than many other cultures. But it’s not beyond possibility. Becoming our unique selves means reconnecting with Earth and soul by turning to the arduous (and often frightening) task of questioning and dismantling all of our cultural identifications and assumptions, to re-identify with what is. If we can find this ‘bedrock’ of who we are we will discover the special gifts that we can then offer in service to community and Earth. 

Similarly, Stephen Buhner tells us that we must have the courage to move into and through our suffering, rather than to keep avoiding it:  

Astonishingly enough, the decision to turn the face to the source of the pain and the grief, to fully embrace it, stimulates, over time, the emergence of the form of Earth work that is uniquely yours to do: work that comes from your essential genius, the work you were born to do, the work that Earth needs you and only you to do. And this is crucial: for it is each of us in our millions, doing the unique work that is ours alone to do, in the particular landscape we inhabit, that is the solution to the crisis of our times. (62)

GII is certainly making these rarely completed tasks even harder as it tears people away from embodied reality into a confused and distorted ideology of denial.

To become healthy human beings—a living integration of body–mind–soul, embedded in the ecological community—we need to face some unpleasant truths, not least to begin to free ourselves from the hierarchy of gender and what it tells us we are supposed to be.

The Mothers from the Beginning

Only when women are free will humanity evolve as intended. ~Monica Sjöö (63)

When Carol Lee Flinders said, ‘I was not suited for radical politics. I was too easily overwhelmed by feelings of confusion, despair, or inadequacy to be of much use to any movement,’ (64) it gave substance to my own feelings. Health issues aside, though I have always been an idealist, I’m temperamentally unsuited to political activism. So while I am aware of and greatly distressed by the political ramifications of GII, and the threat to the rights and safety of women and girls, I suppose my core fascination relates more to the philosophical side of things, and how the ideology has tainted my/our understanding of the world. Nevertheless, though the years since 2016 have been confusing and painful, I am also grateful for what they have brought me: a movement towards a more radical feminism; better critical thinking; the unearthing of pre-patriarchal ancestral wisdom; a more compassionate awareness of human confinement within overwhelming cultural patterns and conditioning; and a recognition of the crucial importance of women and girls to everything. There is, indeed, a kernel of transformative potential in suffering.

In a talk by Sally Roesch Wagner about the influence of the egalitarian Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) people on early American feminism, I distinctly remember her saying that Haudenosaunee men had a concept of women that made rape unthinkable. (65) Imagine that! A world in which men see women as human beings, worthy of being treated as such, with respect for their bodily sovereignty and integrity. A world without male dominance or violence.  A world without unjust hierarchies. A world that is founded on mutual respect and relationship, rather than boundary violations. This would be a world in which women could be ourselves.

This is not an impossible utopian vision, but a memory of how things used to be. Matriarchal cultures, which are/were egalitarian, show us ways of being that value women and men equally, and acknowledge that each are required to create a human society that is whole. I use Heide Goettner-Abendroth’s definition of matriarchy:

… the Greek word “arché” means not only “domination,” but “beginning”—the earlier sense of the word. The two meanings are distinct, and cannot be conflated …

Based on the older meaning of “arché,” matriarchy means “the mothers from the beginning.” This refers both to the biological fact that through giving birth, mothers engender the beginning of life, and to the cultural fact that they also created the beginnings of culture itself. Patriarchy could either be translated as “domination by the fathers,” or ‘the fathers from the beginning.” This claim leads to domination by the fathers, because—lacking any natural right to claim a role in “beginning”—they have been obliged, since the start of patriarchy, to insist on that role, and then to enforce it through domination. Contrary to this, by virtue of giving birth to the group, to the next generation, and therefore to society, mothers clearly are the beginning; in matriarchy they have no need to enforce it by domination. (66)

Women, as the creators of human life, have also been the original creators of culture. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the female is superior to the male, yet it does indicate that the female, and especially mothers, should always be respected, and that society should be organised around the core principle of supporting mothers and their children.

Importantly, what we know of matriarchal, or to use Riane Eisler’s term, ‘partnership’ societies, is that while they do have different female and male social roles, these roles are equally valued and considered equally crucial for the harmonious functioning of communities. Further, the differences do not seem to be so rigidly enforced as they are in patriarchal gendered systems, which may have made crossing over into different aspects of the roles both possible but probably fairly unremarkable. 

Exasperatingly, GII often makes the claim that many indigenous cultures acknowledge/d multiple genders, or so-called ‘two-spirit’ people, as if this is evidence of enlightened societies. Yet such gendered categories are often proof of a patriarchal society with a strict gender hierarchy, usually including homophobia. (Sound familiar?) 

Speaking specifically of Native Americans, Deirdre Bell writes that

… American Indian nations that had more rigid gender roles and assigned women less power historically felt the need to strip male/female identities from non-conformers, while more egalitarian societies with less gender socialization lack two-spirit people because of, rather than in spite of, their lack of emphasis on sex-assigned gender roles. (67)

There literally is no need to transgress gender roles if your society does not rigidly define what you must be, and women and men are both valued. As Bell makes clear, being egalitarian, the Haudenosaunee had no ‘third genders’ or ‘two-spirit’ people; conversely, the Dene—a patriarchal society that often treated women badly—did recognise third genders, but usually only for men.

The simple fact is that men who genuinely respect women would never claim to be women, no matter how they feel about or understand themselves.

The imposition of the idea of transgenderism onto indigenous and other non-Western cultures, as well as people from the past, is yet another way that it is colonising diverse peoples and societies, erasing nuance and complexity. It shows us that GII is just another authoritarian, patriarchal movement that is being forced upon everyone. As J.K. Rowling said at some point, the violence of trans activism is not a bug in the movement, it’s a feature. 

It is also, as so many people have pointed out, a ‘luxury belief.’ Most people, especially in the non-Western/non-industrialised world, simply do not have the time or the resources to be obsessing about their identities and making changes to their bodies and appearance—nor, in most cases, would it even occur to them to do so. It’s a sign, I think, of the ecological and spiritual poverty of the dominant culture, as well as its arrogance and narcissism, that we have not only fallen for this ideology, but that it’s being forced upon others too, homogenising beautiful, wise, diverse cultures under a regime of gendered conformity. 

An irony of our technological advancement is that it has created a society that is in many ways scientifically more naïve than the preindustrial world, in which no citizen who learned physics through backbreaking work and understood climate through subsistence agriculture would have assumed that he or she was exempt from the laws of nature. The “modern” kind of magical thinking is characterized by the belief that repeating falsehoods like incantations can transform them into scientific truth. It is also yoked to a quasi-mystical faith in the free market, which, according to the prophets, will somehow allow us to live beyond our means indefinitely. ~Marcia Bjornerud (68)

In splitting mind from body, valuing male ways of being over female ways, separating ourselves from nature and speaking as disembodied minds, we’ve lost sight of what is real, what is most important, and what is sacred. The perpetual gap in the dominant culture that Susan Hawthorne speaks of also ‘makes it possible to doubt the existence of divinity,’ which means 

doubting the need to retain places which are sacrosanct. It means providing proofs which show that meaningful rituals – which are a source of joy to ordinary people, and the stuff of connectivity between people – have no scientific basis or purpose. Doubting divinity reduces social connectedness; recognising divinity creates respect for those things deemed sacred and creates a regard for the specialness of life. (69)

I believe that this lack of the sacred in modern life is part of the originating wound that has led to GII, and I’m of the same mind as Sarah Braun:

Gender ideology is simply a symptom of a culture that has forgotten. It’s a symptom of a culture with a gaping god hole, loss of religion/spirituality, and loss of connection to land. We’re all grasping for ways to feel whole, to re-create a spiritual structure that fits with our frame of reference. And, deep down, we are all deeply craving our first primal attachment: that deep and nourishing connection to our Mother (of which many of us were deprived due to our own mother’s lack of ability to give us what we needed). (70)

I am opposed to the monotheistic, punitive, patriarchal religions, and the transcendent concept of theism, but I am not opposed to religion itself as a concept or an experience. From Latin religare, meaning ‘to tie,’ ‘to bind,’ or ‘reunion,’ religion can be what holds us together, and reconnects us umbilically to Earth, as communities as well as individuals. Spiritual frameworks can give us a sense of coherence, of belonging, and offer ways to articulate meaning that enable us to acknowledge both the beauty and joy in life, as well as its unavoidable suffering and difficulty. Healthy, life-enhancing spiritual beliefs that affirm that what is is sacred, give us a way to accept the things that are outside of our control. 

The patriarchal God has only one commandment: Punish life for being what it is. The Goddess also has only one commandment: Love life, for it is what it is. ~Monica Sjöö & Barbara Mor (71)

As we can infer from the pioneering work of archaeomythologist Marija Gimbutas, and scholars such as Gerda Lerner, Merlin Stone and Heide Goettner-Abendroth, matriarchal societies were peaceful cultures of sacred immanence that did not divide spirit from matter, mind/soul from body, culture from nature, or even life from death. This does not mean that they did not recognise difference, but I believe there was no fragmentation, no ‘troubling’ of boundaries as QT would say. All of these contrasting facets of existence were undivided, creating a multi-layered wholeness, a multiplex unity. Matriarchies are ‘the experienced unity of psychic/productive/sexual/cosmic power and activity in the egalitarian collective of women.’ (72) This multiplicity-in-unity was often expressed via depictions of the female body, representing a divine creatrix or originating clan mother, or ‘a Goddess who is Nature herself.’ (73) 

To say the people who worshiped the Goddess were deeply religious would be to understate, and largely miss, the point. For here there was no separation between the secular and the sacred. As religious historians point out, in prehistoric and, to a large extent, well into historic times, religion was life, and life was religion. ~Riane Eisler (74)

Figurine from the Vadastra culture, Romania, c. 4200 BC

We have lost this sacred coherence, and are now held captive in a world of disconnection. GII and QT are disconnected. Politics and economics and science are disconnected. Even the major religions, for the most part, have lost the original ethos of the word religare.  

What is certain is that while life is difficult and sometimes uncomfortable, we are not oppressed by earthly reality, and acknowledging the reality of biology is not bigotry. Oppression—beyond the natural and inescapable processes of illness/injury, ageing, and death—is a human construct, developed by patriarchal cultures, which themselves are constructs. And anything that has been made can be unmade, and then remade in a better way. The way that we structure the secondary reality of culture that emerges from the primary reality of nature can take numerous forms. The culture of domination that we are confined within is not inescapable. Matriarchal societies show us what was, and may still be, possible.

Westerners are fond of the saying, ‘Life isn’t fair.’ Then, they end in a snide triumphant: ‘So get used to it!’ What a cruel, sadistic notion to revel in! What a terrible, patriarchal response to a child’s budding sense of ethics. Announce to an Iroquois, ‘Life isn’t fair,’ and her response will be: ‘Then make it fair!’ This is the matriarchal approach to learning. ~Barbara Alice Mann (75)

A truly egalitarian culture, free from hierarchy and male violence, would enable entirely different relationships to emerge between women and men, and between humans and Earth. There would certainly be less division, more connection, and more human commonality; and also more diversity, whether personal, cultural or ecological. Yet it would not be an androgynous society that obscures bodily reality or disallows different expressions of who we are, as women and men. I agree wholeheartedly with Madalyn Geraldine when she says

in a real utopian, post-sexist world the erasure of female-only spaces could never happen. The erasure of female-only language could never happen. In a world of liberated women, sexual based boundaries would be upheld as God given rights, and revered as sacred and unflappable. Our bodies would be respected with boundaries that could never be crossed, raped, or brutalized. Boundaries around our groups, circles, public and private spaces would never come into question. It would be self-evident that we deserve them simply because we enjoy them, and that any man stepping foot into one is lost, perhaps in every sense of the word. (76)

To acquiesce to the distorted, contradictory, dissociated demands of GII means that we will all be lost.

Reaching the Bedrock

The need to think is inspired by the quest for meaning. Thus, thinking should never be dissociated from the world of participation. ~Janice Raymond (77)

And so I return to Stephen Buhner’s words—‘[i]t matters, deeply, the quality of the thoughts (and style of thinking) we take as our own’—and his urging that we find an embodied language, and I lament that I have had to write this analysis. Have I just ended up replicating the same dissociated thinking and language that is the problem? Still, I have attempted, as much as possible, to ground my thoughts and words in ecological reality, as I understand it. Though like everyone else I am subject to my own internalised assumptions and identifications, my own disconnection, and my addiction to, and deferral to constructed reality, I always at least try to make the bedrock of Earth my source.

And what I’ve (re)discovered is that thinking and writing in this exploratory way, making connections, pondering with a both/and body-mind, and, vitally, refusing to censor myself, brings me feelings of wildness and joy and freedom, which are a far cry from the feelings that come to me from the ideologies I’ve discussed. As Buhner said, some ways of thinking ‘deepen our sense of self, strengthen the best in us, connect us more deeply to truth, to Earth, to our humanness and moral center.’ The ideology of gender identity, for me, does the opposite, and my knowledge of the disturbing and confusing dogma it represents has been a heavy burden to carry.  

What I’ve also (re)discovered in this process is how much I value liminality and connections, the plurality that is wholeness, and ways of speaking that illuminate the experience of paradox and mystery that sometimes emerges into lucidity. I like peering into and contemplating all the layers and interpenetrations and complexities of reality. I try to uphold a both/and point of view. The nihilistic reasoning and language of queer theory, to my feeling mind, my thinking heart, is a distortion of this.

And I think of how ‘the disciplined or creative imagination [has] the ‘post-logical’ ability that satisfies logic but goes beyond it.’ (78)

And I think that ‘[o]ne can believe in sometimes-hard-to-perceive, immeasurably complex, and willful cause-and-effect relationships, and still be a rigorous thinker (and feeler).’ (79)

And I think too that ‘[a] woman who truly thinks is, more expansively, full of thought in many realms.’ (80)

I refuse to allow the dissociated ideologies of gender identity and QT to contaminate my mind, my sense of self, or my understanding of ‘this ever-moving, ever-changing scenario that we call Earth.’ (81) And I am grateful to all of the writers and radical, embodied thinkers (many quoted here, many not) whose words and ideas have informed my perspective and enabled me to untangle my thoughts. A weight has been lifted and I am breathing more freely now.

I will end with the acknowledgement that the pain that people are experiencing is real, and therefore we must tread carefully. But it is proof of an unhealthy culture, not of any kind of wrongness within individuals. If we do not interrogate the pain’s origins, and question our cultural identifications, we will never figure out how to help ourselves or anyone else to move through it and emerge transformed, with body and psyche still intact.

It is the dominant culture that must change … yet the cold hard truth is that we cannot change it, just as I cannot stop anyone from believing in the fantasy of gender identity. In the end we can only change ourselves, by asking the difficult questions, challenging our cultural conditioning and internalised assumptions, and by finding our own bedrock. Once we have discovered, or are at least moving towards, that foundation, we can begin (re)creating our ethical, ecological and spiritual understanding upon it. And if enough of us do this, who knows, maybe larger changes will come.

Restoring the bond between the human and Earth is in fact an essential ecological reclamation of the self. And that ecological reclamation involves a decolonization of the soul, an un-domestication of personal identity, a freeing of mind from cliched, unexamined patterns of thinking. ~Stephen Harrod Buhner (82)

In the end ‘there is no “solution,” but instead an ongoing participation’ with, and surrender to, what is. (83) We are our biology and we are more than our biology. We are subject to earthly limits, yet inside we are vast.

*

Since this has been a personal exploration, and it is already more than long enough, I have not been able to cover all of the aspects of GII that I find concerning, even disturbing, such as the medical scandal engulfing children with major vulnerabilities; the fetishistic nature of many, if not most, male trans identities; the nonsensical nature of non-binary identities; the extremely suspect origins of transsexualism, the concept of gender identity itself, and QT; the big money and lobby groups behind the movement; the dehumanisation and silencing of women through slurs like ‘TERF,’ plus threats of, and actual, violence; the silencing and ostracisation of detransitioners and so-called trans-widows; the demonisation of J.K. Rowling for saying entirely reasonable things … the list goes on.

For anyone who is not aware of what is unfolding, or who thinks that transgenderism is merely a legitimate continuation of the gay rights movement, I urge you to do some investigation, think critically, and most importantly—listen to women. Feminists have been trying to raise the alarm about this issue for years now, and lesbians for literally decades! We all need to wake up to the reality of GII. We need to seek embodied truth.

References

1. Andrea Dworkin, Intercourse, Twentieth Anniversary Edition, Basic Books: New York, 1987/2006, p. 63 

2. Stephen Harrod Buhner, Earth Grief: The Journey Into and Through Ecological Loss, Raven Press: Boulder, Colorado, 2022, p. 27–28

3. Marina S, ‘What Gender Is and What Gender Isn’t,’ 17^th February 2014 – http://notazerosumgame.blogspot.com/2014/02/what-gender-is-and-what-gender-isnt.html

4. Renée Gerlich, Out of the Fog: On Politics, Feminism and Coming Alive, Spinifex Press: North Geelong, 2022, p. 94

5. Susan Griffin, ‘The Way of All Ideology,’ in Made From This Earth: An Anthology of Writings by Susan Griffin, Harper & Row: New York, 1982, p. 161

6. Gerlich, Out of the Fog, p. 70

7. Gerlich, Out of the Fog, p. 137

8. Susan Griffin, ‘The Way of All Ideology,’ p. 166

9. Nina Paley, ‘Gender Colonialism,’ in Elizabeth Miller (contributing editor), Spinning and Weaving: Radical Feminism for the 21^st Century, Tidal Time Publishing: Mason, MI, 2021, p. 622 – a version of this piece can also be found on Nina’s blog: https://blog.ninapaley.com/2018/02/07/gender_colonialism/

10. Paley, p. 623

11. Germaine Greer, quote found on Facebook, source unknown

12. Charlene Spretnak, ‘In the Absence of a Mother Tongue,’ Women’s Voices: A Journal of Archetype and Culture, Spring Journal: New Orleans, Louisiana (Fall 2014), pp. 90–91

13. Paul Shepard, Coming Home to the Pleistocene, Island Press: Washington, D.C., 1998, p. 39

14. Gerlich, Out of the Fog, p. 93

15. Griffin, ‘Pornography and Silence,’ in Made From This Earth, p.136

16. Lisa Marchiano, ‘Symptoms as Symbols,’ in Spinning and Weaving, p. 586–587

17. Marchiano, p. 590

18. Jasun Horsley, ‘The Rise of the Dream-State: Trans Agendas, Gender Confusion, Identity & Desire (Part 1 of 3),’ 31 May 2017 – https://auticulture.wordpress.com/2017/05/31/the-rise-of-the-dream-state1/

19. Jane Clare Jones, ‘A Note on Smashing the Binary,’ 1 October 2018 – https://janeclarejones.com/2018/10/01/a-note-on-smashing-the-binary/

20. Robert Bringhurst, The Tree of Meaning: Language, Mind and Ecology, Counterpoint: Berkeley, 2006/2008, pp. 62

21. Jones

22. Gerlich, Out of the Fog, p. 135

23. Jonah Mix, ‘Playing the Intersex Card,’ originally published on Medium, but since censored

24. Marchiano, p. 592

25. Rachel Kadish, The Weight of Ink, A Novel, Text Publishing: Melbourne, 2017, p. 518

26. Renée Gerlich, ‘On Twenty-First Century Patriarchy, and the Place of Women’s Hearts in Women’s Movement,’ in Spinning and Weaving, p. 9

27. Sarah Braun @rewild.mothers, from an Instagram post, 27 February 2023 – https://www.instagram.com/p/CpIssTAveep/

28. Janice Raymond, ‘Radical Feminist Activism in the 21^st Century,’ in Spinning and Weaving, p. 46

29. Gerlich, Out of the Fog, p. 129

30. Horsley

31. Dana Vitálošová, ‘Therapeutic Ideology as a Way of Bringing Women Back Two Hundred Years,’ in Spinning and Weaving, p. 92

32. Gerlich, Out of the Fog, p. 130

33. Kay Turner, ‘Contemporary Feminist Rituals,’ in Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art & Politics, Issue 5 – The Great Goddess, The Heresies Collective Inc, January 1978, p. 25 

34. Barbara Christian, quoted in Somer Brodribb, Nothing Mat(t)ers: A Feminist Critique of Postmodernism, Spinifex Press: North Melbourne, 1992, p. 137

35. Buhner, p. 45

36. Bringhurst, p. 320

37. Gerlich, Out of the Fog, p. 93

38. David Hinton, Hunger Mountain: A Field Guide to Mind and Landscape, Shambhala: Boston, 2012, p. 57

39. Bringhurst, p. 52

40. Monica Sjöö & Barbara Mor, The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth, Harper One: New York, 1987/1991, p. 417

41. Griffin, ‘Pornography and Silence, 117

42. Thomas Berry, The Dream of The Earth, Sierra Club Books: San Francisco, 1988, p. 208 

43. James Robb, ‘Do Women Exist? – The Science of Sex, the Politics of Gender, and the Materialist and Dialectical Thinking Needed to Distinguish the Two,’ 10 December 2018 – https://convincingreasons.wordpress.com/2018/12/10/do-women-exist-the-science-of-sex-the-politics-of-gender-and-the-materialist-and-dialectical-thinking-needed-to-distinguish-the-two/?fbclid=IwAR34JLjdjJQ2CQdRGEIMg2rPcYDdqBJBI_rwJBk1f1uvHTw4us6ZNY5tqTI

44. Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, Routledge: London, 1993, p. 178

45. Shepard, Coming Home to the Pleistocene, pp. 44–45

46. Susan Hawthorne, Wild Politics: Feminism, Globalisation, Bio/Diversity, Spinifex Press: North Melbourne, 2002, p. 147 of ebook

47. Paul Shepard, The Others: How Animals Made Us Human, Island Press: Washington, D.C., 1996, p. 162

48. Buhner, p. 243

49. Buhner, p. 79

50. Thomas Berry, The Great Work: Our Way Into the Future, Three Rivers Press: New York, 1999, p. 67

51. Bringhurst, p. 208

52. Berry, The Dream of the Earth, p. 86

53. Berry, The Dream of the Earth, p. 208

54. Derrick Jensen, How Shall I Live My Life?: On Liberating the Earth from Civilization, PM Press: Oakland, California, 2008, p. 49

55. Bill Plotkin, Nature and the Human Soul: A Road Map to Discovering Our Place in the World, Finch Publishing: Lane Cove, Sydney, 2008, p. 2

56. Plotkin, p. 40

57. Bringhurst, p. 202

58. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves: Contacting the Power of the Wild Woman, Rider: London, 1992, p. 204

59. Dorothy H. Donnelly, ‘The Sexual Mystic: Embodied Spirituality,’ in Mary E. Giles (ed.) The Feminist Mystic: And Other Essays on Women and Spirituality, Crossroad: New York, 1982, p. 127

60. Shepard, The Others, p. 325

61. Horsley

62. Buhner, p. 16

63. Monica Sjöö, New Age & Armageddon: The Goddess or the Gurus? Towards a Feminist Vision of the Future, The Women’s Press: London, 1992, p. 67

64. Carol Lee Flinders, Enduring Grace: Living Portraits of Seven Women Mystics, HarperCollins e-books, 2007, p. ix

65. Sisters in Spirit: The Iroquois Influence on Early American Feminists – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HoLpdHpQQQ

66. Heide Goettner-Abendroth (translated by Karen Smith), Matriarchal Societies: Studies on Indigenous Cultures Across the Globe, Peter Lang: New York, 2012, 2013, p. xvi

67. Deirdre Bell, ‘Toward an End to Appropriation of Indigenous “Two Spirit” People in Trans Politics: The Relationship Between Third Gender Roles and Patriarchy,’ 9 March 2013 – https://culturallyboundgender.wordpress.com/2013/03/09/toward-an-end-to-appropriation-of-indigenous-two-spirit-people-in-trans-politics-the-relationship-between-third-gender-roles-and-patriarchy/

68. Marcia Bjornerud, Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World, Princeton University Press: Princeton, New Jersey, 2018, p. 164

69. Hawthorne, pp. 147–148 of ebook

70. Sarah Braun, ‘Rewilding Sex and Gender: A Story of Humans,’ 4 February 2023 – https://rewildmothers.substack.com/p/rewilding-sex-and-gender-a-story

71. Sjöö & Mor, p. 430

72. Sjöö & Mor, p. 16

73. Marija Gimbutas (edited by Joan Marler), The Civilisation of the Goddess: The World of Old Europe, HarperSanFrancisco: New York, 1991, p. 223

74. Riane Eisler, The Chalice and The Blade: Our History, Our Future, HarperSanFrancisco: New York, 1987, 1995, p. 23

75. Derrick Jensen, Dreams, Seven Stories Press: New York, 2011, p. 459

76. Madalyn Geraldine @madalyngeraldine, from an Instagram post, 25 October 2022 – https://www.instagram.com/p/CkHFJVOuSI3/

77. Janice Raymond, A Passion for Friends: Toward a Philosophy of Female Affection, Spinifex: North Geelong, 1986/2001, p. 215

78. Penelope Shuttle & Peter Redgrove, The Wise Wound: Menstruation and Everywoman, new revised edition, Paladin: London, 1978/1986, p. 125

79. Jensen, Dreams, p. 241

80. Raymond, A Passion for Friends, p. 221

81. Buhner, p. 13

82. Buhner, p. 246

83. Shepard, The Others, p. 319