The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘Internalized Misogyny’

Posted on | July 7, 2014 | 49 Comments

That interesting phrase occurs in a long essay by a woman who “spent three years living as male, a year and a half on testosterone” as part of female-to-male “transgender” therapy before deciding to stop the hormones and “de-transition”:

When I was nineteen, I discovered the word “dysphoria” in a trans activist group on campus. Dysphoria explained my humiliation of being a female. It explained why I felt that I should be treated as my older brother had been. I wasn’t free to live the way I wanted to — unless I was a boy.

Imagine this desperately unhappy woman, at age 19, whose experience of being female was a source of “humiliation,” thinking she had found the solution to her unhappiness in “a trans activist group on campus.” Now, imagine this woman discovering that “trans” therapy didn’t solve her problem, and trying to get her head around that:

I am a product of my society, a response to your criticism and encouragement, I am a hall of mirrors reflecting your uncertainties and insecurities. I see eyes that look back with questions for answers. I see the shame of being a dyke and the elation of being a boy. My transition wasn’t a a careless decision, or a mistake — it was a reaction to my society and my experience that resulted in a better quality of life and provided me with the comfort of having answers and options. Eventually awakening to the ill-fit of living as male allowed me to examine my sex from a more holistic perspective.
What is my gender? I identify with my sex after being repulsed by it my entire life. My gender is that having a cunt has affected every facet of my existence, even when I turned the tables on others’ perception of my body. My gender is having discovered that I don’t enjoy fitting in with the guys: passing as male, becoming fluent in bro-talk, and being assumed to have a penis. By making my sex invisible, I internalized misogyny.

Well, you can read the rest of that. I’ve often said that feminism has replaced psychotherapy in the lives of mentally ill women, which is not to say that these unfortunate misfits are entirely unsympathetic. One gets the impression in this particular case that “23xx” comes from a severely dysfunctional family background, but without any access to healthy family life for purposes of comparison, she can’t analyze her own situation with any clarity. Her attitudes toward men are a weird mix of envy and hate:

Around a year on [testosterone], an alarm started going off in my head. . . . I was becoming what I hated. . . .
At this point, I would rather be able to simply acknowledge that I hate most men, with good reason, than to delude myself into thinking that I was mistaken about misogyny and that I really am lesser somehow.

Here’s the weird thing: After scanning her blog a while, I kept finding angry references to her mother, but never any mention of her father. One hesitates to engage in long-distance analysis of someone on the basis of a partial and superficial reading like this, but this seems to me highly suggestive. One might expect hatred of males from a woman who expressed resentment toward her father, but in this case, there is not even any mention of a father. And so, Herr Doktor?

The single mother dotes on the elder child, a boy, and fails to establish a healthy relationship with her younger child, a girl. The daughter experiences rejection, envies her older brother — who is loved and accepted by their mother in a way that she, the girl, is not — and as a result, the daughter grows up with a sense of alienation so profound that it overwhelms her identity as a woman.

Like I said, this kind of “remote analysis” is something we should hesitate to engage in, but you have to think that this extreme case of “internalized misogyny” must be explicable by some peculiar circumstance of her childhood. You also have to think that warning signs of her maladjustment were ignored or misinterpreted by her parents and teachers: “Oh, she’s just going through a phase.”

Uh, no.

Parents need to recognize that misfits (of whatever kind, including Creepy Little Weirdos like Elliot Rodger) don’t just “get over” their problems, and early manifestations of psychological abnormality can’t be dismissed as “going through a phase.” Most misfits eventually find some way to cope with their problems, at least well enough that they don’t commit murder or suicide (or both). But they tend to arrive at the coping point only after years of struggle, loneliness, misery and harmful “acting out” of their inner problems.

And now that I’ve invoked the misogynistic killer Elliot Rodger, let me point out something else from the “23xx” blog: One reason she quit testosterone treatment was in the hope of “getting my anger under control,” having discovered that her “intense urges to self-harm . . . had become much more extreme and violent towards myself” as a result of being on testosterone. Doesn’t this testimony about the effects of androgenic hormones — their association with anger and violence — tell us something about the fundamental root of the problem for anti-social male misfits like Elliot Rodger? And isn’t this something feminist theory tends to ignore?

Having myself long since become accustomed to the effects of testosterone — which all males experience naturally —  I think feminists could learn something useful from “23xx,” something their quasi-Marxist cultural theories are inadequate to explain.

 

Comments

49 Responses to “‘Internalized Misogyny’”

  1. An American Girl in Italy: Ruth Orkin | Batshit Crazy News
    July 7th, 2014 @ 8:56 am

    […] TOM: Internalized Misogyny […]

  2. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    July 7th, 2014 @ 9:24 am

    It is safe to say a sex change is not the best way to find yourself. Try art or travel first.

  3. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    July 7th, 2014 @ 10:16 am

    That site you linked to had this gem:

    Iran carries out among the highest number of sex changes in the world and is the only country that imposes the death penalty for homosexual behavior while permitting sex changes.

    If Iran thinks sex changes are a good idea, it might be an indication something is very wrong.

  4. anonymous
    July 7th, 2014 @ 11:03 am

    Like most Tumblr blogs, one cannot read it for more than a few minutes without concluding that the author is suffering from a lack of brisk backhands across the face. Had her parents administered a few therapeutic slaps at critical moments during her childhood and adolescence, she would not be taking hormones and “living as a man,” whining about how horrible her life is, nor keeping company with loathsome and repugnant sexual deviants.

  5. Phil_McG
    July 7th, 2014 @ 11:08 am

    I do feel sorry for her. Let’s hope her story will serve as a warning to other confused girls who think they’re boys.

    Girls, you can inject fake hormones into your arms and find a doctor who will cut up your lady parts into a crude parody of a penis. But you will never be a man.

    Every brick of every building you see when you walk down the street is there because a man put it there. Every time you switch on a light, start your car, or post whiny status updates on Tumblr, it’s because men made it possible for you.

    It’s not a coincidence that God Himself is masculine.

    Men are made of courage, strength, and responsibility. To be a man, you need the character to roll your sleeves up, look life’s problems square in the eye, and say “come at me, bro!”

    At best, you she-he’s can aspire to being Pajama Boys. Maybe you should call yourselves FtPB transsexuals.

  6. Durasim
    July 7th, 2014 @ 11:23 am

    This…troubled person recalls a certain encounter:
    “I was targeted by an old man who thought I was desperate enough to accept his offer of a place to stay and all the Bad Juice I could drink in exchange for ‘taking care of him’ in every meaning of the phrase.”
    Did this dirty old man think he was soliciting a male or a female? Or perhaps this old coot had a thing for trannies?

  7. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    July 7th, 2014 @ 11:36 am

    While I agree that appropriate corporal punishment can, in the right circumstances, be a force of good in parenting–this mess seems to be more than merely “spare the rod…”

    What is it with Tumblr and the mentally ill?

  8. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    July 7th, 2014 @ 11:37 am

    Eewww.

  9. Julie Pascal
    July 7th, 2014 @ 11:48 am

    The thing about getting help is… there’s not a single therapist in the country today that would dare do anything in response to an expression of gender identity contrary to sex other than be “supportive”.

  10. Julie Pascal
    July 7th, 2014 @ 11:53 am

    “Men are made of courage, strength, and responsibility. To be a man, you need the character to roll your sleeves up, look life’s problems square in the eye, and say “come at me, bro!””

    Which is pretty much the description of a woman (as opposed to a girl.)

    The stooopid related to so much about sexes differences bugs the crap out of me, and women and men definitely tend to trend on separate (but overlapping) bell curves, I will not say that women are just like men, but honestly… a person of character, is a person of *character*, and what counts as character is very nearly the same for both sexes.

  11. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    July 7th, 2014 @ 11:56 am

    Neither gender has a monopoly on virtue or mendacious-ness.

  12. robertstacymccain
    July 7th, 2014 @ 12:06 pm

    Of course. I keep thinking of the old vaudeville routine where the patient says, “Doctor, it hurts when I move my arm like this.” And the doctor says, “So stop moving your arm like that.”

    I don’t know how such an approach would work with gender dysphoria, but the point is, if it makes you unhappy to think about your sex/gender — if this is a source of humiliation and shame to you — then STOP THINKING ABOUT IT ALL THE TIME.

    Find yourself a hobby. Lose yourself in your job. Become a workaholic or learn how to play guitar. Do something productive, something that makes you feel useful to society and, by doing so, squeeze the unhappy parts of your life into a corner where they don’t bother you so much.

    There is something to be said in favor of repression and sublimation, really.

  13. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    July 7th, 2014 @ 12:10 pm

    I am not saying gender re-assignment is not ever justified, but let’s say I am skeptical about most (the vast majority) of them.

  14. CrustyB
    July 7th, 2014 @ 12:16 pm

    “Leaving sex to the feminists is like letting your dog vacation at the taxidermist.”
    -Camille Paglia

  15. Phil_McG
    July 7th, 2014 @ 12:28 pm

    Julie, I agree with you. But when it comes right down to it, the responsibility for going downstairs to investigate strange noises in the night, or going to war to defend the nation, or killing spiders, falls on the broad shoulders of men. When men stop being manly, things fall apart.

    Talking about masculine virtues doesn’t take anything away from feminine ones.

    Manhood is much maligned and misunderstood by the mincing meterosexuals who now dominate Western culture and politics. When we’re not being accused of being rapists, men are blamed for pretty much everything else you can think of.

    I believe many of the problems in modern society stem not from too much masculinity, but from too little of it. And this idea that you can change your sex through hormones and surgery, as if human beings are like machines that can swap out spare parts, is crazy.

  16. jakee308
    July 7th, 2014 @ 12:39 pm

    Five’ll get you ten, she’s fat and homely.

  17. Phil_McG
    July 7th, 2014 @ 12:41 pm

    So you’re saying… maybe people shouldn’t act out every whim that enters their head and then cry about it on Tumblr?

    But I’m pretty sure the Patriarchy made 23xx do it. If only there was a special hat, made out of some type of flexible metal, that could be used to block the Patriarchy’s mind control.

  18. Matt_SE
    July 7th, 2014 @ 12:49 pm

    I’m glad you brought up Elliot Rodger, because I was just about to:
    Both Rodger and “23xx” had the love/hate thing going on. In “23xx’s” case, it was envy/hate. In Rodger’s case, it was lust or desire/hate.
    It’s a good thing women have less testosterone than men, otherwise we might be treated to a parade of female-perpetrated mass shootings.
    Of course, these are the fundamental biological differences that RadFems deny exist.

  19. Matt_SE
    July 7th, 2014 @ 12:52 pm

    Or “mendacity,” for that matter.
    😉

  20. Art Deco
    July 7th, 2014 @ 1:01 pm

    Parents need to recognize that misfits (of whatever kind, including Creepy Little Weirdos like Elliot Rodger)
    don’t just “get over” their problems, and early manifestations of
    psychological abnormality can’t be dismissed as “going through a phase.”

    Did I misunderstand the articles on him or was not Elliot Rodger steeped in the attentions of the ‘helping professions’? Could the outcome have been worse had the parents actually adopted a ‘laissez-faire’ policy with him?

    There is a class of parents who respond to their children’s problems by hiring paid professional substitutes. Mental health tradesmen and private school employees earn a living off such parents and the former at any rate have an implicit mandate not to disturb the routines of such parents (see Allan Bloom on this point; Scott Peck maintained that the professionalism of his trade prevented them from being co-opted by troublesome parents, but non ci credo).

  21. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    July 7th, 2014 @ 1:41 pm

    Thanks!

    BTW, is it mendoucheous-ness or mendouchecity?

  22. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    July 7th, 2014 @ 1:42 pm

    When in doubt, blame the Patriarchy! Who knew Bush is the Patriarchy?

    I am not sure about a special metal hat, but I hear continual viewing of most lamestream media channels can help block these Patriarchal urges.

  23. Escher's House
    July 7th, 2014 @ 1:43 pm

    Every male must learn to live with the effects of testosterone. It is fundamental to their socialization. Otherwise, they become outcasts and brutes.

  24. Escher's House
    July 7th, 2014 @ 1:45 pm

    Sigmund Freud had a great deal to say about both.

  25. Escher's House
    July 7th, 2014 @ 1:46 pm

    Stop thinking about and do what most unhappy girls do. Sleep around. And drink heavily.

  26. petetheelder
    July 7th, 2014 @ 2:00 pm

    I wouldn’t be so quick to assume the mom is somehow to blame here. All we have is this person’s impressions that the mom favored the brother and she is obviously not the most stable observer of her situation. Could be she is just messed up and its not the parents fault at all.

    She seems to think that the entire world is judging her and sees herself only through the eyes of others. A big part of maturing from a teen to an adult is learning that even though you are thinking about yourself all the time and you are the center of your universe, most other people hardly think about you at all. Everyone else has other more interesting things to think about besides judging you all the time.

  27. kilo6
    July 7th, 2014 @ 2:19 pm

    I wouldn’t necessarily call it repression especially because of the negative connotations that word had these days in our sex-obsessed culture. It’s more a matter of being in control of your passions as a rider controls a horse.

    In words more eloquent than mine…

    Thus, a good man, though a slave, is free; but a wicked
    man, though a king, is a slave. For he serves, not one man alone, but,
    what is worse, as many masters as he has vices.
    ” (emphasis mine)

    – St. Augustine, City of God

    I’d also defer to Euripides description of what happens to a society when the spirit of Dionysus takes control as he described in The Bacchae. Many modern “sexually liberated” citizens have suffered a fate similar to King Penthius.

    There’s really no great mystery to what happens when social engineers and sexual revolutionaries try to turn society into a boink-fest.

    Those who do not learn from history…etc, etc

  28. M. Thompson
    July 7th, 2014 @ 2:26 pm

    The more things change, the more they stay the same.

  29. Julie Pascal
    July 7th, 2014 @ 3:26 pm

    *Sigh* Phil.

    I joined the military, I kill the spiders (or catch them and put them out, or call the kids to see if they are really *cool* spiders), and I own the pistol with the self-defense rounds.

    What do you consider feminine virtues? Not having notions of Honor or Duty? Being afraid of spiders?

    I will go on record as saying *Thank you Patriarchy!* for killing the saber toothed tigers and doing the risky and dangerous jobs so that women can endure the extreme physical (and mental) limitations imposed by pregnancy and nursing and just plain being *smaller* than you guys.

    But you’ve got no superiority on courage or resolve or willingness to face life’s Dirty Jobs with a stiff upper lip.

  30. Dianna Deeley
    July 7th, 2014 @ 3:39 pm

    Or literature, which is wiser and less messy.

  31. Mm
    July 7th, 2014 @ 3:59 pm

    Heh. http://www.barnhardt.biz/2014/07/06/the-one-about-wherein-ann-unloads-on-feminists/

    Some quotes:

    “-Feminists are angry, bitter, jealous, narcissistic, prideful,
    self-absorbed women who hate men and deeply resent their own femininity.

    -Many feminists are lesbians, and thus, by definition, are suffering
    from massive and acute psycho-sexual disorders rooted in self-loathing.

    -In addition to being lesbians, many feminists are also de facto transvestites.

    -Feminists hate both authentic masculinity and authentic femininity, and desire to establish themselves as a third gender which dominates andis superior to the other two.
    ****
    I resent having to act like a man because you have castrated all of the men, who now keep their shriveled balls in a jar atop their television sets.”

  32. DeadMessenger
    July 7th, 2014 @ 4:32 pm

    There’s a lot of mendouchecity in Washington DC.

  33. DeadMessenger
    July 7th, 2014 @ 4:54 pm

    Maybe your last sentence is true, but I, for one, would prefer to let them get rid of icky things, and do icky jobs, such as snaking the toilet.

    And here’s one of the best things about being a woman: you can choose to let them do these things, as I do, or not, as you do.

    In exchange, I’ll take care of tough stains on clothes, remember to send cards and gifts for family and friend celebrations, and gestate any babies we choose to have. This seems like an equitable division of power to me.

  34. Adjoran
    July 7th, 2014 @ 5:07 pm

    DC put the “city” in mendouchecity.

  35. DeadMessenger
    July 7th, 2014 @ 5:12 pm

    I believe you hit the nail on the head. I don’t know these people, nor what they did or did not do, but isit possible that they paid someone else to show their son attention in lieu of themselves? What kind of relationship did Elliot have with his father? Were they close? Did they go do “man things” together?

    The point to being a role model for one’s children is actually modeling the appropriate role, which starts in toddlerhood. If Elliot’s father threw money at him instead of his own time and attention, that could explain a lot.

    And it seems pretty clear that 23xx’s mother did not exactly lavish time and attention on her, nor teach her what it means to be a woman. And the possible lack of a loving father influence in her life didn’t help matters any.

  36. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    July 7th, 2014 @ 6:38 pm

    Of course we have a gay president and a tranny first lady: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et38_Ufv-Jw

  37. Phil
    July 7th, 2014 @ 8:09 pm

    Good grief what a nest of public masturbators this is. Jack off to the notion of what manly masculine manly men you are in private, please gentlemen. One might suspect all this online posturing was an attempt to compensate for something.

  38. K-Bob
    July 7th, 2014 @ 8:25 pm

    Like military assignments, then.

    “What can you do?”

    Well, I’m really good at electronics.

    “Good, we need men like you over in supply.”

  39. K-Bob
    July 7th, 2014 @ 8:27 pm

    Sounds like re-re-assignment.

    I think I’ll transition to a “them.” I’m getting used to having everything blamed on me, anyway.

  40. K-Bob
    July 7th, 2014 @ 8:31 pm

    So far I’ve found one decent “tumblog”. It’s called “Fuck your Noguchi coffee table”

    http://fuckyournoguchicoffeetable.tumblr.com/

  41. K-Bob
    July 7th, 2014 @ 8:33 pm

    Man, she’s looking more and more like that Wildenstein wierdo.

  42. K-Bob
    July 7th, 2014 @ 8:34 pm

    I wonder if NAMBLA has a chapter there

  43. Whothehell Cares
    July 7th, 2014 @ 9:15 pm

    I wish I could remember the article that was put out years ago. It showed how differing levels of testosterone in males and females had different effects.

    One outcome, was that females who had slightly higher testosterone levels than normal became agitated and more aggressive than usuual, while slightly higher levels than normal in males had no significant impact.

    It was found that only much higher levels or too low a level of testosterone significantly altered the mood state of males.

    Interestingly, lower than normal testosterone in males led to similar behavior as too much testosterone in males, but also negatively affected males ability to concentrate.

  44. K-Bob
    July 8th, 2014 @ 4:10 am

    I was intrigued by your thesis here. Maybe if we did a double-blind, uhh, thingy, we could figure out the …thing you were writing. In the box. Comment box, I mean.

    I think.

    Man, that “rule five” stuff is pretty good.

  45. K-Bob
    July 8th, 2014 @ 4:13 am

    If you fail to learn to live with the effects of testosterone…, yoooou might be a redneck.

    http://blogs.ajc.com/the-buzz/files/2012/10/1_61_foxworthy_jeff-300×225.jpg

  46. K-Bob
    July 8th, 2014 @ 4:19 am

    That “remembering” thing is one of the great mysteries about women that men will never understand.

    I can remember the bolt/unbolt sequence on a Brigs and Stratton lawnmower engine rebuild, and all the bolt sizes and how to replace and adjust the points, and I learned that thirty years ago. But I can’t remember my Sister’s birthday, or what tie I wore to my wedding. Also what we were talking about yesterday or my Brother’s phone number.

    If I were not married, I’d probably forget half of my family.

  47. DeadMessenger
    July 8th, 2014 @ 6:25 am

    You wouldn’t be able to dress yourself adequately, either, lol

  48. Moneyrunner
    July 9th, 2014 @ 7:41 am

    Julie, Julie, Julie. What are you trying to prove? That you represent women? That the majority of women join the military? Own guns? Kill spiders? Assuming you are what you say you are, you are an outlier. Take any random group of 1000 women and most would not resemble you. That does not make those women less or more. It makes them typical.

    Your attitude is in many ways the thing that makes feminists. It’s not that they want to be great women, it’s that they want to be like men. So along comes the pill and now they can have an endless list of bedmates, just as they imagine men do. It’s really sort of sad.

    I like guns but can’t get my wife interested. I kill spiders for her. If we go somewhere together it’s assumed that I will do the driving (unless it’s in her car with the child seats in back for the grandkids). OTOH, I do the vacuuming … I like it.

  49. News of the Week (July 13th, 2014) | The Political Hat
    July 13th, 2014 @ 12:29 pm

    […] ‘Internalized Misogyny’ That interesting phrase occurs in a long essay by a woman who “spent three years living as male, a year and a half on testosterone” as part of female-to-male “transgender” therapy before deciding to stop the hormones and “de-transition” […]