Older gay male here. The youngsters took it way too far and dropped the “Gay” from “Gay Pride.” “Queer Pride” has become a St Patrick’s Day phenomenon appropriated by heterosexuals thirsty for some of that cool LGB cred. Now declare yourself trans or non binary (trans light) and you get your Queer label, even if you still look like a suburban soccer mom.
Straight woman of a certain age here, who lives within spitting distance of WeHo. I couldn't agree more. It's beyond cringe when straight young women decide to go to the Abbey for brunch and virtue signaling. Wow, you're so brave, you're willing to drink mimosas in a room full of gay men who are ignoring you. Amazing!
They absolutely took it too far. Everyone was supportive of gays, mostly anyway. No one cared. And because it was finally normalized in society, they decided to break it. Gay isn’t a gender. A gay man is still a man, and a gay woman is still a woman. The human species is binary, period. And sure, how we behave is a spectrum, but we cannot become the other thing. Sex is immutable. That’s just a fact of human life. We are not clown fish. What these infiltrators wanted was special minority status. They wanted the ability to self declare themselves a minority.
As you said, it was cool, and they craved the cred. And everyone wanted a piece of that cred through association. Liberals, anyway.
I agree. Science, which we are supposed to worship, is clear on the subject of our species being male and female. As a woman who has undergone Stage 3 breast cancer along with a mastectomy, I find this attitude that amputating a young girl's breasts is so simple! so easy! to be vomit-inducing. Adult mastectomy patients are confined to rest (no work, no driving) for four weeks, and one has drains and is covered in awful bruises. Some women develop terrible infections, which may be from inadequate home care, but I cannot imagine a sixteen year old handling this without any problems. I don't know how this works in gender transition patients, but for me, everything right down to the chest wall was removed. My nerves were severed and it took a long time for muscles to resume proper functioning. My point is, why do we put this on young people without a second thought? This should not be done to anyone under 25, in my opinion. Furthermore, the idea that men can simply become women, the half of the species that menstruates and bears children, is laughable. I have no idea what is going to become of these men who are taking floods of estrogen, but I doubt it will be positive. Estrogen is an extremely powerful hormone; I have to take an estrogen blocker because that's what fueled the cancer, but we have no problem prescribing these to young women. That's crazy. They will suffer joint pain , fatigue, faulty memory and feel old before their time, all for what?? So they can be part of this trans train? Regrets are useless. That bell cannot be unrung, and no one is more vulnerable to the tyranny of mob rule than adolescents. That's what make this unnatural shitshow so sad.
To be real clear about it, no human has ever transitioned from one sex to another. The trans moniker is a misnomer. Humans can't actually transition into anything. Once a human male, always a human male. Fact of life.
And no one knows what impact any of this will have on the people subscribing to these drugs and surgeries. What we do know is that it will require a lifetime commitment to drugs, doctors, and therapy. Kind of like an antivirus software subscription, where it's only as effective as the last payment.
And with that, it becomes abundantly clear -- this is live human experimentation for profit, and very illegal globally, not just nationally. Not only should it be inaccessible to those 25 or younger, it should be illegal for anyone to perform the surgical procedures or distribute the hormone drugs. Any violation should come with the revocation of their license, heavy fines, and possible jail time.
Objectively speaking, there has been a 100% failure rate in treating gender dysphoria. No human has ever actually transitioned from one sex to another. Gender affirming care is the marketing name of a costly and useless procedure.
The whole thing is ludicrous.
If you think a mastectomy is rough, think about a vaginoplasty. Once they slice off the penis, it's basically an open wound that must be managed daily to stave off infection and prevent wound closure. It's not real, of course, and never can be. It's a simulated sex organ. Again, lifetime medical maintenance. The perfect customer/patient who can never quite heal from the wound inflicted by the medical establishment, with the promise of "transitioning".
Sorry to beat a dead horse here, but the original term was transsexual, not transgender. Sexuality is malleable and fluid. Gay men, gay women, bi-sexual, etc. Humans can transition to same sex attraction. Our software is programmable in that way. The platform, or meatware, is not.
Transgender came about in the mid 60's. Read the John Money and Reimer twins story. A lot of this crap is based on this psychopathic pedophiles work. It ended in a broken family and multiple suicides.
Well … according to you, highly qualified gender expert that you are, what gender are people with androgen insensitivity syndrome? Genetically male with undescended testicles, externally female in all respects including genitalia and most always identify as female for their entire life.
Yes, rare cases, but the exceptions make the rule.
For me … I don’t need to be part of the gender police and consider your position oversimplifies.
You're talking about a birth defect, which impacts 1 in 20,000 to 1 in 100,000. They're male, which makes them men. It's a defect, though. A genetic flaw. Evolution naturally suppresses their existence, because they cannot reproduce. They are an evolutionary dead end, because the human species is necessarily binary. It consists of males and females, and evolution has given each sex unique gender characteristics through natural selection. Our meatware is immutable from conception, where our software is a bit more malleable. We can call each other whatever. It's irrelevant, but biologically there are unique difference between the two sexes. A man is an adult human male, and a woman is an adult human female. Gender is bound to the chromosome level which is consistent with a normal humans sex. This is objectively true, because 10,000,000 years from now when some modern civilization digs up our corpse, they will be able to tell who is male and who is female. You can't ask a corpse what gender they identify as, so they will be examples of human men and women, and boys and girls. The idea of self declared gender is a social contagion infecting the human software. It's driven by money, politics, fame, power, attention, etc, etc. People naturally resist norms for some weird reason. Sorry, there is nothing special about self declaring yourself a "non-binary". You're either a man, or a woman.
Agreed. Exceptions, by definition, don’t make the rule. There’s a fundamental difference between the LGB community, which is grounded in biological sex and distinguished by sexual orientation, and the TQIA+ community, which defines itself through gender ideology. They really should not be grouped together.
When your argument hinges on exceptions, name-calling, and political buzzwords, you're not making a point, you're trying to bury one. Keep digging, Paul.
Pointing to rare exceptions doesn’t nullify biological reality — it confirms it
‘Nutty’ antivaxers? I haven’t heard of them. Rational antivaxers of course I have heard of. What is your definition of nutty. ‘Correct, but they fluked it’?
This isn't entirely true. There are way too many variations on the chromosomes/DNA science to go into on a substack reply. Anything digging up bodies in 10 million years will have to have very advanced tech to discern sex characteristic differences as their reference point will likely have changed due to evolutionary pressure (i.e. skeletal evidence)alone much less innovation. You've made points about society and minorities and I'm sure you believe the "meat" body things you've written, but I'd ask you to look more closely into the genetic research surrounding intersex conditions and the eroding Y chromosome and how other creatures we share the Earth with (until we extinct them) have different chromosomes to "meat" (using your word) and even different reproductive strategies. Intersex is not always a dead end. It may in fact be evolutionary. We won't know until the right pressure occurs and it emerges as a solution.
There's a harshness in the over-simplification of the trans' discussion that is misleading and allows dehumanization. In the end, dehumanization will drag us ALL into a gulag.
The societal hypocrisies alone surrounding trans' issues are breathtaking. I'm very much for protecting the vulnerable but in our world at the moment, one of the most vulnerable things is the truth.
The bottom line is, you are promoting a kind of soft relativism that ultimately rejects biological reality in favor of ideological elasticity.
You say, truth is under attack — and then spend several paragraphs muddying it.
Gender follows sex, and sex is defined by chromosomes. Your eroding Y chromosome statement is sci-fi at this point. It's a million year guess into a weird future evolutionary track. Is it possible? I'm pretty sure science could get to the point where they can make a flying pig. So, yes, anything is possible a million years into our evolution.
We're talking about the here and now, not the what if and what might be when....
The human race is objectively binary. It's not even a debate. There are male humans, and female humans. We procreate. We carry on the species. That's how we progress into the future, and how we've always progressed into the future, objectively. It's not debatable.
What sexual orientation people possessed through out history, or how they felt about it, is totally irrelevant.
Gender is a behavioral term. We can observe a male animal, understand it's role as a male, then discern the differences in the opposite sex. Then we slap gender labels on those sexes.
Bull / Cow
Hen / Chicken
Stallion / Mare
Man / Woman
Over complicating science with completely arbitrary and made up terms so people can feel unique in some social group, is counterproductive to the work of science. Are we going to start making up new terms for sexually confused chickens so we don't hurt their feelings?
I'm glad you are happy with black and white simplicity. It seems to suit you.
It's evident by your response that you didn't understand anything I wrote or the science involved in this topic. Rescuing your beloved simplicity from all that obscure nuance has been your good deed for the day and appears to have left you very self-satisfied. If only life were so easy for everyone else.
There is no sense in wasting my time with someone so convinced of their own prejudices. The framework for a few of your "points" are so similar to "points" made by supporters of slavery in the mid 1800's as to make me wonder if you are a language learning AI.
If you are human, I encourage you to delve into the findings of new genetic and neuroscience research. You are arguing using the talking points of right wing punditry and it shows.
Hope you have the black and white life you richly deserve.
Well gosh Andy, thanks for making a snap judgment based on a rigid definition that in this case leads to a foolish outcome. It’s rare but it happens and it makes your definition look ridiculous.
Born with female genitalia, female on their birth certificate and raised that way, breasts and no trace of male characteristics. 100% experience themselves as female. But you, as gender police, can tell them with smug certainty they are wrong, they are male.
But hey, black and white thinking is easy. You be you.
They’re genetically male. That’s not me policing anyone — it’s just what their DNA says. I’m not denying how someone feels, but I’m also not going to pretend chromosomes are up for debate because it makes people uncomfortable. Black-and-white thinking is only a problem when the truth is gray. In this case, it’s not.
You are splitting hairs. Everyone knows there are anomalies. But 6’2” 240 pound narcissists screaming about their trans right to expose themselves to little girls is what we are against. Human life is binary. Male and female. With a broad spectrum of behaviours allowed and seen for each sex. But still male and female. There is no rational dispute about this. .
What you're talking about is criminal behavior. There are jails for that. Criminals will wear all kinds of camouflage to obscure their intentions, identity and criminality. They'll pretend to be all kinds of things for access to potential victims. Examples of reliable camouflage include youth pastor and sports coach. Criminals operate under the "whatever works" principle. When there was some societal acceptance and attempts at accommodations for inter-sex/trans' individuals, then that became available camouflage for the criminally minded. That said, there are very few of these attacks occurring. The local youth pastors are still statistically far more dangerous.
Think of it like this. The heart has 4 chambers. Once in a long while a person is born with a two chamber heart. But when we teach physiology of the heart we discuss a 4 chamber heart. Same with sex. It’s a binary
Agreed. Exceptions, by definition, don’t make the rule. There’s a fundamental difference between the LGB community, which is grounded in biology and concerns sexual orientation, and the TQIA+ community, which defines itself through gender ideology. They should not be grouped together.
If you haven’t already read them, you might be interested in the following articles: “How the Transgender Rights Movement Bet on the Supreme Court and Lost,” by Nicholas Confessore, June 19, 2025, New York Times; and “How the Gay Rights Movement Radicalized and Lost Its Way,” by Andrew Sullivan, June 26, 2025, New York Times.
There’s a fundamental difference between the LGB community, which is grounded in biology and concerns sexual orientation, and the TQIA+ community, which defines itself through gender ideology. They should not be grouped together.
I could not agree more with that statement. The gay community was hijacked by screaming delusional lunatics, with support by liberal guilt and political power, and then sured up with dollars by the pharmaceutical, psychiatric, and surgical cosmetic fields. Not to mention the fashion and cosmetic industries. Gender ideology was turned into a multi-billion dollar powerhouse of political and corporate collusion and perversion, and dragged the LGB community into it unwittingly.
The saying "the exception proves the rule" means that the existence of an exception to a general rule actually serves to highlight or confirm the validity of that rule. It suggests that if there were no rule, there wouldn't be anything to be an exception to. The phrase has its origins in a Latin legal principle, and while its modern usage is often misunderstood, it essentially implies that exceptions test or demonstrate the existence of a rule. So when you say that the rare exception of a DSD makes the rule, what you are confirming that the human species is binary.
The human species is also characterized by binocular vision or two eyes. That some people are born with only one eye does not invalidate the rule that humans have two eyes. Indeed, the fact that there are only rare exceptions to this rule means that there is a rule in place. Otherwise, if humans did not have two eyes, it would not be a rare exception when only one eye occurs.
Pride flags or that abomination of a “Progress Flag”? I saw two gals at the store on Saturday, clearly they were my sisters probably a couple. I was parked near them and tipped my hat and wished them a happy Pride…my guess they were headed to a barbecue. That was the extent of my celebrating this year. A shared moment of connection, nothing insane.
I’m down with the L and the G and don’t trust the B’s as far as I can throw them. The rest of the letters are just attention seeking BS (Oh, look! More letters!)
I live in an older subdivision outside of AtlantaGA. My next door neighbors are two married lesbians. There are three more lesbian couples in the neighborhood (there used to be two gay male couples but they moved and I don’t think there are any more). Outside of the small rainbow flag on the back deck of our next door neighbor (which has been there for years), the only pride flags I’ve seen are very large ones hanging by the front door of male/female couples.
Funny story: I live in a triple decker condo association (three units). The other owners are two couples, one straight and one lesbian. My straight neighbors decided to hang a pride flag off their deck without consulting the rest of us. Personally I wouldn’t have cared. The lesbians on the other hand asked them to take it down 🤣
A straight couple with two little kids and a little dog a few houses down from me fly a gay-pride flag rain or shine every day.
At least it's not the progress flag with that black and brown triangle jutting into the rainbow stripes like an angry dagger. I really shudder whenever I see one.
The progress flag is everywhere in New York City. The invention of such a flag was the first sign of trouble: What, rainbow colors aren't good enough for black and brown gay people (or, at any rate, those who purport to represent them)?
The fragmentation is complete. There are gay people who fought for marriage equality, won it, and go to work, take care of aging parents, and worry about whatever human thing they're worried about.
And there are activists and their minions who expect everyone to keep their ever-changing sexuality in the forefront, refer to them by pronouns ever in flux, and kowtow to a fantasy that includes double mastectomies for 17-year-olds, calling brawny six footers Margie and letting them compete in sports against girls, and putting twice-convicted rapists into women's prisons.
The threats against J.K. Rowling usually by empty vessels in search of excitement are so over-the-top malignant, that people with any sense should've put a moratorium years ago on anything trans.
Endocrinologists, shrinks, and surgeons I get. They want perpetual patients. But why virtually all of my heterosexual friends (and some gay ones too) have glommed onto such a travesty is a mystery to me.
Becuz ppl are idiots, and follow whims like lemmings off a cliff. This applies across the board: men/women, gay/straight, black/brown/BIPOC/whatever, activist/normie....all of us. Stupid idiots who rarely think with their own faulty walnuts.
Agreed. Exceptions, by definition, don’t make the rule. There’s a fundamental difference between the LGB community, which is grounded in biology and distinguished by sexual orientation, and the TQIA+ community, which defines itself through gender ideology. They should not be grouped together.
If you haven’t already read them, you might be interested in the following articles: “How the Transgender Rights Movement Bet on the Supreme Court and Lost,” by Nicholas Confessore, June 19, 2025, New York Times; and “How the Gay Rights Movement Radicalized and Lost Its Way,” by Andrew Sullivan, June 26, 2025, New York Times.
Don’t blame it on the moms. It’s the men who want access to women’s spaces and claim to BE women, forcing lesbians to comply with their dicks or be labeled transphobic hate mongers, playing in female sports because they suck playing against other men, or heading into prisons to rape freely. The idea one could just become something because they say so should never have been attached to rights for gays.
Pride has always been risque, at least the large city celebrations, but it wasn't being marketed to children. If young men want to see other chiseled young men dance scantly cladded on a float as an adult that's their choice. But now we have this bring your five year old to Pride and we have NOT young men that want to be young men again walking naked down the street exposing themselves to those same five year olds. Yeah no surprise many are saying f this.
Not to mention it's become this monthly long, never ending event, like a second Christmas season. We don't need a second Christmas. We also don't need "tuck bathing suites" in the women's department at Target. A woman has nothing to tuck.
Well said, I noticed the same in New York. Downtown NYC was very empty on Sunday and what I did see was a lot of eye candy to a straightish man like me… a lot of hot, young, mostly white, unclad, women who no doubt identify as queer but who in a couple of years will be married to a male hedge-fund manager popping out kids in Westchester.
In SF it felt like just another weekend. We heard the shouting from the trans march as they went by Fri night, but if we didn't go downtown, and we didn't, you'd never know it was Pride except for the flags on every lamp post. In earlier years there would be tons of people coming into the city the week before Pride with MUNI packed going into the Castro. Safeway would be jammed that morning, but neither happened.
Theme for the Parade this year was "Joy in queer resistance". No doubt next year it will be The Queer Pride Parade. Gays and lesbians have been eliminated and everything is queer here. News stories only use queer when referring to anyone.
I think it's gone way past its sell by date with not many buying any more.
True. That word is applied to us whether we want it or not. I always make a point of saying that I don’t use it for myself or for the historical figures I write about who didn’t use any such word and would have seen it as an insult. It’s most annoying, especially as now it means a set of political opinions rather than anything to do with sexuality
I welcome the death of Pride. Let 2025 mark it’s tombstone 👏.
L word out and don’t worry about us taking you with us gay boys. We have always managed to find each other. Gaydar it’s called - settled science. Larry clearly has it and good for him for reaching out to support his sisters. I vote anyone from LGBT Courage Alliance or LGB Alliance busy themselves with planning our next tea dance or brunch where we can celebrate our survival and desire to be around others like us? Time to bring back the big gay fun and ditch the bullying and toxicity of trans activists and their supporters.
Can you blame anyone who merely wanted the freedom and respect to love and marry another human of the same gender for distancing themselves from what has become whatever it is you would call a mindset that chants Queers for Palestine?
Maybe. Here it was much more muted. A few Officials tried to gin things up among the normies (I'm a normie) but no grassroots energy, no energy in the mainstream.
As a normie, thats fine by me. Get sexuality (not love and romance) out of kids faces - that goes for everyone.
Get intense navel gazing about identity out of everyone's faces, it's like encouraging a hypochondria of the soul.
Other than that, live and let live. I think that's the basic normie view
I agree Pride was radically different this year but think the root cause was corporations. Last year companies in the US were compelled by law to get high ESG scores to prevent being sued by stock holders so they had to contribute so much to LGB causes. This year ESG scores are all gone so companies can be sued for wasting money on LGB causes. No corporate money means Pride month will be smaller and more organic. Probably most members of the community agree grassroots is better than have corporations use your sexuality as a marketing scheme.
I'd be embarrassed and uncomfortable if the whole western world turned the entire month of June into a state-sanctioned corporate-sponsored celebration of my sexual preferences every year. How narcissistic would I have to be to revel in that, even once, still less year after year? There is nothing transgressive about "Pride." It's a bland celebration of bourgeois conformity. If I was gay, I'd be happy to see it die.
When mainstream media run endless versions of incredibly privileged wannabes, Hollywood children and left wing apparatchiks all claiming to be victims of some sort for whom we should march I am left cold. The visceral anger that fuelled the mid 80s pride with the explosion of AIDS related hate was notable not just for its radicalising of much larger numbers than the brave souls who marched in the dark days of illegality but also for the solid and unselfish support lesbians offered to gay men in their hour of need. As an 18 year old in 1985 I had already been beaten up, had police raid clubs I was in, had a knife held to my throat and, at London pride seen those watching the parade spit (literally) on it and scream abuse. I heard so many tragic stories of what people suffered, far worse than I did, and there was a sort of excitement, even elation that we were standing up and saying “no more”. And that's my point I suppose; I don't rate the claimed persecutions of the endlessly expanding victim class as worthy of response and their comfort in the perpetual expansion of hurtiness is dreary; less a rallying cry than a lullaby for babies endlessly wailing.
SF this year was drab, since perhaps nobody knows what’s celebrated anymore.
Freedom was marked three times on June 26 with the Supreme Court announcing freedom from DOMA, freedom to have sex and freedom to marry afterwards, and well as freedom (announced in protest June 28) to go to a bar and find someone to have sex with and get married to.
Freedom or Liberation (remember gay liberation? Gay lib?) was the point of the event, nothing else.
Since trans already had freedom to mimic women, and queers already had freedom to have heterosexual sex, they had to find something to be disapproved of, so they adopted the sin of pride. The event is now simply self-congratulation of the remarkable skill they had to have their actions be totally legal all the time.
Tell me that you don't like trans folks without saying so: "Traditional Gays and Lesbians—the actual community—have, for the most part, left it behind".
Sylvia Rivera should kick you in the ass.
We can agree on the corporization of the event, though. But your rant is quite poor and shallow.
Agreed! It’s an absolutely putrid stance to take. Sadly, the people that most needed to hear what Sylvia Rivera had to say were the ones booing the loudest. Not much has changed.
Also shoutout to Substack for constantly recommending me articles written by assholes like this.
I know its terrible, women fired for saying there are only two sexes, confused children (statistically more likely to be gay, lesbian, autistic or in care) subject to an experimental medical protocol that gets banned everytime a government comprehensively checks it out, incarcerated women raped by men in their jail cells, compelled to call their rapists 'women', losing their sports places to males.
Yes. Real people under the bus.
I'm in favour for civil rights for trans people, I hope they live happy lives free of discrimination. But until the trans movement honestly and fairly addresses the concerns above - by no means an objective list - there's going you be pushing back.
Why would you think there wouldn't be? That's a genuine question I'd like an answer to.
Talking of trans people as a lobby (wtf) of people and not a diasporized community with different realities and without institutions at their charge, and adressing an issue on each one of them for things they haven't done is plain transphobic fallacy. What justice are we suppose to adress? That's insane.
Give me numbers and statistics of your concerns, I'll give you mine.
Until then, the only one pushing people under the bus is you.
You're such a sad and pathetic human being that it is perfectly understandable why you are not able to even grasp such a complex and beautiful thing like being trans.
And above that, you are not even able to understand from a historical perspective the deep impact trans folks have had on the whole LGBT+ movement.
Pride parades have for decades been about more than acceptance and fairness, they've been a glorification of sex, pure, carnal hardcore sex. And the idea of an entire month of pride is hubristic and frankly ridiculous. We're here we're queer, get used to it is about narcissism, not justice. My son is gay and stable and rational. He would no sooner spend a week hoisting a flag to show everyone how gay he is than wear.a cowboy hat and drive a big truck.
Gay pride even with the stupid and self reverential name once was a necessary bulwark against a myriad of prejudices and laws that discriminated against gays and lesbians. Much of society dismissed them and made them "other". That need to repudiate ugly behavior towards gays is largely gone except in poor communities and foreign born residents. But the latent narcissism that has always existed within Pride is a self fulfilling prophecy. When orgiastic behavior of men was lifted up like it's an actual moral thing, the game was over. Gays have themselves to blame for malformed people taking over Pride. It is a monster of grotesque perversity that caters to people unmoored from reason BECAUSE it always glorified the idea of self gratification at any cost. You don't like it, society? F you, this is about what I want to do! Pride is a monster of sexual depravity and borders on pedophilic. Any sane gay or lesbian owes it to their sense of goodness to ignore it..
Nice line: “done being props in someone else’s tantrum.” Exactly. In big cities in the West Pride has been hijacked by lunatics of the Queers for Palestine variety, and the word queer now applies more to a set of political opinions than to any sexuality.
Older gay male here. The youngsters took it way too far and dropped the “Gay” from “Gay Pride.” “Queer Pride” has become a St Patrick’s Day phenomenon appropriated by heterosexuals thirsty for some of that cool LGB cred. Now declare yourself trans or non binary (trans light) and you get your Queer label, even if you still look like a suburban soccer mom.
Straight woman of a certain age here, who lives within spitting distance of WeHo. I couldn't agree more. It's beyond cringe when straight young women decide to go to the Abbey for brunch and virtue signaling. Wow, you're so brave, you're willing to drink mimosas in a room full of gay men who are ignoring you. Amazing!
They absolutely took it too far. Everyone was supportive of gays, mostly anyway. No one cared. And because it was finally normalized in society, they decided to break it. Gay isn’t a gender. A gay man is still a man, and a gay woman is still a woman. The human species is binary, period. And sure, how we behave is a spectrum, but we cannot become the other thing. Sex is immutable. That’s just a fact of human life. We are not clown fish. What these infiltrators wanted was special minority status. They wanted the ability to self declare themselves a minority.
As you said, it was cool, and they craved the cred. And everyone wanted a piece of that cred through association. Liberals, anyway.
I agree. Science, which we are supposed to worship, is clear on the subject of our species being male and female. As a woman who has undergone Stage 3 breast cancer along with a mastectomy, I find this attitude that amputating a young girl's breasts is so simple! so easy! to be vomit-inducing. Adult mastectomy patients are confined to rest (no work, no driving) for four weeks, and one has drains and is covered in awful bruises. Some women develop terrible infections, which may be from inadequate home care, but I cannot imagine a sixteen year old handling this without any problems. I don't know how this works in gender transition patients, but for me, everything right down to the chest wall was removed. My nerves were severed and it took a long time for muscles to resume proper functioning. My point is, why do we put this on young people without a second thought? This should not be done to anyone under 25, in my opinion. Furthermore, the idea that men can simply become women, the half of the species that menstruates and bears children, is laughable. I have no idea what is going to become of these men who are taking floods of estrogen, but I doubt it will be positive. Estrogen is an extremely powerful hormone; I have to take an estrogen blocker because that's what fueled the cancer, but we have no problem prescribing these to young women. That's crazy. They will suffer joint pain , fatigue, faulty memory and feel old before their time, all for what?? So they can be part of this trans train? Regrets are useless. That bell cannot be unrung, and no one is more vulnerable to the tyranny of mob rule than adolescents. That's what make this unnatural shitshow so sad.
To be real clear about it, no human has ever transitioned from one sex to another. The trans moniker is a misnomer. Humans can't actually transition into anything. Once a human male, always a human male. Fact of life.
And no one knows what impact any of this will have on the people subscribing to these drugs and surgeries. What we do know is that it will require a lifetime commitment to drugs, doctors, and therapy. Kind of like an antivirus software subscription, where it's only as effective as the last payment.
And with that, it becomes abundantly clear -- this is live human experimentation for profit, and very illegal globally, not just nationally. Not only should it be inaccessible to those 25 or younger, it should be illegal for anyone to perform the surgical procedures or distribute the hormone drugs. Any violation should come with the revocation of their license, heavy fines, and possible jail time.
Objectively speaking, there has been a 100% failure rate in treating gender dysphoria. No human has ever actually transitioned from one sex to another. Gender affirming care is the marketing name of a costly and useless procedure.
The whole thing is ludicrous.
If you think a mastectomy is rough, think about a vaginoplasty. Once they slice off the penis, it's basically an open wound that must be managed daily to stave off infection and prevent wound closure. It's not real, of course, and never can be. It's a simulated sex organ. Again, lifetime medical maintenance. The perfect customer/patient who can never quite heal from the wound inflicted by the medical establishment, with the promise of "transitioning".
Sorry to beat a dead horse here, but the original term was transsexual, not transgender. Sexuality is malleable and fluid. Gay men, gay women, bi-sexual, etc. Humans can transition to same sex attraction. Our software is programmable in that way. The platform, or meatware, is not.
Transgender came about in the mid 60's. Read the John Money and Reimer twins story. A lot of this crap is based on this psychopathic pedophiles work. It ended in a broken family and multiple suicides.
Sorry you had to go through that.
“The human species is binary, period. “
Well … according to you, highly qualified gender expert that you are, what gender are people with androgen insensitivity syndrome? Genetically male with undescended testicles, externally female in all respects including genitalia and most always identify as female for their entire life.
Yes, rare cases, but the exceptions make the rule.
For me … I don’t need to be part of the gender police and consider your position oversimplifies.
You're talking about a birth defect, which impacts 1 in 20,000 to 1 in 100,000. They're male, which makes them men. It's a defect, though. A genetic flaw. Evolution naturally suppresses their existence, because they cannot reproduce. They are an evolutionary dead end, because the human species is necessarily binary. It consists of males and females, and evolution has given each sex unique gender characteristics through natural selection. Our meatware is immutable from conception, where our software is a bit more malleable. We can call each other whatever. It's irrelevant, but biologically there are unique difference between the two sexes. A man is an adult human male, and a woman is an adult human female. Gender is bound to the chromosome level which is consistent with a normal humans sex. This is objectively true, because 10,000,000 years from now when some modern civilization digs up our corpse, they will be able to tell who is male and who is female. You can't ask a corpse what gender they identify as, so they will be examples of human men and women, and boys and girls. The idea of self declared gender is a social contagion infecting the human software. It's driven by money, politics, fame, power, attention, etc, etc. People naturally resist norms for some weird reason. Sorry, there is nothing special about self declaring yourself a "non-binary". You're either a man, or a woman.
Agreed. Exceptions, by definition, don’t make the rule. There’s a fundamental difference between the LGB community, which is grounded in biological sex and distinguished by sexual orientation, and the TQIA+ community, which defines itself through gender ideology. They really should not be grouped together.
If you are going to say a definition is absolute, and an exception shows it is not, you end up looking foolish.
But whatever, bathroom and gender police are as rampant as nutty antivaxxers these days. 🤷♀️
When your argument hinges on exceptions, name-calling, and political buzzwords, you're not making a point, you're trying to bury one. Keep digging, Paul.
Pointing to rare exceptions doesn’t nullify biological reality — it confirms it
You’re essentially arguing that words are what you say they are, and nothing else matters. Keep digging that hole, on an island all by yourselves.
‘Nutty’ antivaxers? I haven’t heard of them. Rational antivaxers of course I have heard of. What is your definition of nutty. ‘Correct, but they fluked it’?
This isn't entirely true. There are way too many variations on the chromosomes/DNA science to go into on a substack reply. Anything digging up bodies in 10 million years will have to have very advanced tech to discern sex characteristic differences as their reference point will likely have changed due to evolutionary pressure (i.e. skeletal evidence)alone much less innovation. You've made points about society and minorities and I'm sure you believe the "meat" body things you've written, but I'd ask you to look more closely into the genetic research surrounding intersex conditions and the eroding Y chromosome and how other creatures we share the Earth with (until we extinct them) have different chromosomes to "meat" (using your word) and even different reproductive strategies. Intersex is not always a dead end. It may in fact be evolutionary. We won't know until the right pressure occurs and it emerges as a solution.
There's a harshness in the over-simplification of the trans' discussion that is misleading and allows dehumanization. In the end, dehumanization will drag us ALL into a gulag.
The societal hypocrisies alone surrounding trans' issues are breathtaking. I'm very much for protecting the vulnerable but in our world at the moment, one of the most vulnerable things is the truth.
Wishing you peace and empathy.
Cheers!
Yes, way too much to go over here.
The bottom line is, you are promoting a kind of soft relativism that ultimately rejects biological reality in favor of ideological elasticity.
You say, truth is under attack — and then spend several paragraphs muddying it.
Gender follows sex, and sex is defined by chromosomes. Your eroding Y chromosome statement is sci-fi at this point. It's a million year guess into a weird future evolutionary track. Is it possible? I'm pretty sure science could get to the point where they can make a flying pig. So, yes, anything is possible a million years into our evolution.
We're talking about the here and now, not the what if and what might be when....
The human race is objectively binary. It's not even a debate. There are male humans, and female humans. We procreate. We carry on the species. That's how we progress into the future, and how we've always progressed into the future, objectively. It's not debatable.
What sexual orientation people possessed through out history, or how they felt about it, is totally irrelevant.
Gender is a behavioral term. We can observe a male animal, understand it's role as a male, then discern the differences in the opposite sex. Then we slap gender labels on those sexes.
Bull / Cow
Hen / Chicken
Stallion / Mare
Man / Woman
Over complicating science with completely arbitrary and made up terms so people can feel unique in some social group, is counterproductive to the work of science. Are we going to start making up new terms for sexually confused chickens so we don't hurt their feelings?
There is a beauty and practicality to simplicity.
I'm glad you are happy with black and white simplicity. It seems to suit you.
It's evident by your response that you didn't understand anything I wrote or the science involved in this topic. Rescuing your beloved simplicity from all that obscure nuance has been your good deed for the day and appears to have left you very self-satisfied. If only life were so easy for everyone else.
There is no sense in wasting my time with someone so convinced of their own prejudices. The framework for a few of your "points" are so similar to "points" made by supporters of slavery in the mid 1800's as to make me wonder if you are a language learning AI.
If you are human, I encourage you to delve into the findings of new genetic and neuroscience research. You are arguing using the talking points of right wing punditry and it shows.
Hope you have the black and white life you richly deserve.
Cheers!
Well gosh Andy, thanks for making a snap judgment based on a rigid definition that in this case leads to a foolish outcome. It’s rare but it happens and it makes your definition look ridiculous.
Born with female genitalia, female on their birth certificate and raised that way, breasts and no trace of male characteristics. 100% experience themselves as female. But you, as gender police, can tell them with smug certainty they are wrong, they are male.
But hey, black and white thinking is easy. You be you.
They’re genetically male. That’s not me policing anyone — it’s just what their DNA says. I’m not denying how someone feels, but I’m also not going to pretend chromosomes are up for debate because it makes people uncomfortable. Black-and-white thinking is only a problem when the truth is gray. In this case, it’s not.
Paul....pull yer head outcher ass, wouldya ffs?
None of them are even born with fully-developed female genitalia.
You are splitting hairs. Everyone knows there are anomalies. But 6’2” 240 pound narcissists screaming about their trans right to expose themselves to little girls is what we are against. Human life is binary. Male and female. With a broad spectrum of behaviours allowed and seen for each sex. But still male and female. There is no rational dispute about this. .
What you're talking about is criminal behavior. There are jails for that. Criminals will wear all kinds of camouflage to obscure their intentions, identity and criminality. They'll pretend to be all kinds of things for access to potential victims. Examples of reliable camouflage include youth pastor and sports coach. Criminals operate under the "whatever works" principle. When there was some societal acceptance and attempts at accommodations for inter-sex/trans' individuals, then that became available camouflage for the criminally minded. That said, there are very few of these attacks occurring. The local youth pastors are still statistically far more dangerous.
Think of it like this. The heart has 4 chambers. Once in a long while a person is born with a two chamber heart. But when we teach physiology of the heart we discuss a 4 chamber heart. Same with sex. It’s a binary
Agreed. Exceptions, by definition, don’t make the rule. There’s a fundamental difference between the LGB community, which is grounded in biology and concerns sexual orientation, and the TQIA+ community, which defines itself through gender ideology. They should not be grouped together.
If you haven’t already read them, you might be interested in the following articles: “How the Transgender Rights Movement Bet on the Supreme Court and Lost,” by Nicholas Confessore, June 19, 2025, New York Times; and “How the Gay Rights Movement Radicalized and Lost Its Way,” by Andrew Sullivan, June 26, 2025, New York Times.
There’s a fundamental difference between the LGB community, which is grounded in biology and concerns sexual orientation, and the TQIA+ community, which defines itself through gender ideology. They should not be grouped together.
I could not agree more with that statement. The gay community was hijacked by screaming delusional lunatics, with support by liberal guilt and political power, and then sured up with dollars by the pharmaceutical, psychiatric, and surgical cosmetic fields. Not to mention the fashion and cosmetic industries. Gender ideology was turned into a multi-billion dollar powerhouse of political and corporate collusion and perversion, and dragged the LGB community into it unwittingly.
The saying "the exception proves the rule" means that the existence of an exception to a general rule actually serves to highlight or confirm the validity of that rule. It suggests that if there were no rule, there wouldn't be anything to be an exception to. The phrase has its origins in a Latin legal principle, and while its modern usage is often misunderstood, it essentially implies that exceptions test or demonstrate the existence of a rule. So when you say that the rare exception of a DSD makes the rule, what you are confirming that the human species is binary.
The human species is also characterized by binocular vision or two eyes. That some people are born with only one eye does not invalidate the rule that humans have two eyes. Indeed, the fact that there are only rare exceptions to this rule means that there is a rule in place. Otherwise, if humans did not have two eyes, it would not be a rare exception when only one eye occurs.
They’re still male but they have a genetic abnormality. I hope that answered your question.
Exceptions, by definition, do not make the rule.
Disorders/differences of sexual development (DSDs) do not constitute a “third gender” or make one the opposite sex.
Pride flags or that abomination of a “Progress Flag”? I saw two gals at the store on Saturday, clearly they were my sisters probably a couple. I was parked near them and tipped my hat and wished them a happy Pride…my guess they were headed to a barbecue. That was the extent of my celebrating this year. A shared moment of connection, nothing insane.
I’m down with the L and the G and don’t trust the B’s as far as I can throw them. The rest of the letters are just attention seeking BS (Oh, look! More letters!)
I live in an older subdivision outside of AtlantaGA. My next door neighbors are two married lesbians. There are three more lesbian couples in the neighborhood (there used to be two gay male couples but they moved and I don’t think there are any more). Outside of the small rainbow flag on the back deck of our next door neighbor (which has been there for years), the only pride flags I’ve seen are very large ones hanging by the front door of male/female couples.
Funny story: I live in a triple decker condo association (three units). The other owners are two couples, one straight and one lesbian. My straight neighbors decided to hang a pride flag off their deck without consulting the rest of us. Personally I wouldn’t have cared. The lesbians on the other hand asked them to take it down 🤣
A straight couple with two little kids and a little dog a few houses down from me fly a gay-pride flag rain or shine every day.
At least it's not the progress flag with that black and brown triangle jutting into the rainbow stripes like an angry dagger. I really shudder whenever I see one.
The progress flag is everywhere in New York City. The invention of such a flag was the first sign of trouble: What, rainbow colors aren't good enough for black and brown gay people (or, at any rate, those who purport to represent them)?
The fragmentation is complete. There are gay people who fought for marriage equality, won it, and go to work, take care of aging parents, and worry about whatever human thing they're worried about.
And there are activists and their minions who expect everyone to keep their ever-changing sexuality in the forefront, refer to them by pronouns ever in flux, and kowtow to a fantasy that includes double mastectomies for 17-year-olds, calling brawny six footers Margie and letting them compete in sports against girls, and putting twice-convicted rapists into women's prisons.
The threats against J.K. Rowling usually by empty vessels in search of excitement are so over-the-top malignant, that people with any sense should've put a moratorium years ago on anything trans.
Endocrinologists, shrinks, and surgeons I get. They want perpetual patients. But why virtually all of my heterosexual friends (and some gay ones too) have glommed onto such a travesty is a mystery to me.
I HATE that flag! I call it either the "oppression" flag or the "pound puppy" flag just to include all of the "special" slivers of the population.
Hate is not too strong a word. I curse whenever I see one. The black and brown triangle obliterates the rainbow colors -- aggressively, completely.
That’s the whole point!
Becuz ppl are idiots, and follow whims like lemmings off a cliff. This applies across the board: men/women, gay/straight, black/brown/BIPOC/whatever, activist/normie....all of us. Stupid idiots who rarely think with their own faulty walnuts.
Agreed. Exceptions, by definition, don’t make the rule. There’s a fundamental difference between the LGB community, which is grounded in biology and distinguished by sexual orientation, and the TQIA+ community, which defines itself through gender ideology. They should not be grouped together.
If you haven’t already read them, you might be interested in the following articles: “How the Transgender Rights Movement Bet on the Supreme Court and Lost,” by Nicholas Confessore, June 19, 2025, New York Times; and “How the Gay Rights Movement Radicalized and Lost Its Way,” by Andrew Sullivan, June 26, 2025, New York Times.
Don’t blame it on the moms. It’s the men who want access to women’s spaces and claim to BE women, forcing lesbians to comply with their dicks or be labeled transphobic hate mongers, playing in female sports because they suck playing against other men, or heading into prisons to rape freely. The idea one could just become something because they say so should never have been attached to rights for gays.
Accurate. Pride has been over since Y2K.
Pride has always been risque, at least the large city celebrations, but it wasn't being marketed to children. If young men want to see other chiseled young men dance scantly cladded on a float as an adult that's their choice. But now we have this bring your five year old to Pride and we have NOT young men that want to be young men again walking naked down the street exposing themselves to those same five year olds. Yeah no surprise many are saying f this.
Not to mention it's become this monthly long, never ending event, like a second Christmas season. We don't need a second Christmas. We also don't need "tuck bathing suites" in the women's department at Target. A woman has nothing to tuck.
Well said, I noticed the same in New York. Downtown NYC was very empty on Sunday and what I did see was a lot of eye candy to a straightish man like me… a lot of hot, young, mostly white, unclad, women who no doubt identify as queer but who in a couple of years will be married to a male hedge-fund manager popping out kids in Westchester.
In SF it felt like just another weekend. We heard the shouting from the trans march as they went by Fri night, but if we didn't go downtown, and we didn't, you'd never know it was Pride except for the flags on every lamp post. In earlier years there would be tons of people coming into the city the week before Pride with MUNI packed going into the Castro. Safeway would be jammed that morning, but neither happened.
Theme for the Parade this year was "Joy in queer resistance". No doubt next year it will be The Queer Pride Parade. Gays and lesbians have been eliminated and everything is queer here. News stories only use queer when referring to anyone.
I think it's gone way past its sell by date with not many buying any more.
True. That word is applied to us whether we want it or not. I always make a point of saying that I don’t use it for myself or for the historical figures I write about who didn’t use any such word and would have seen it as an insult. It’s most annoying, especially as now it means a set of political opinions rather than anything to do with sexuality
In a curious way it's become like people who loudly proclaim themselves Christians when it's not about Jesus rather their political marker.
Oy! Just got the email for the SF Jewish Film Festival which includes “Queer Jewish Cinema”.
Well, that’s good because many such festivals explicitly exclude Jewish artists who support Israel.
SF Pride was over circa 1994
I welcome the death of Pride. Let 2025 mark it’s tombstone 👏.
L word out and don’t worry about us taking you with us gay boys. We have always managed to find each other. Gaydar it’s called - settled science. Larry clearly has it and good for him for reaching out to support his sisters. I vote anyone from LGBT Courage Alliance or LGB Alliance busy themselves with planning our next tea dance or brunch where we can celebrate our survival and desire to be around others like us? Time to bring back the big gay fun and ditch the bullying and toxicity of trans activists and their supporters.
Can you blame anyone who merely wanted the freedom and respect to love and marry another human of the same gender for distancing themselves from what has become whatever it is you would call a mindset that chants Queers for Palestine?
All this pointless pontificating. We had a great pride here. You’re tilting at windmills buddy.
Maybe. Here it was much more muted. A few Officials tried to gin things up among the normies (I'm a normie) but no grassroots energy, no energy in the mainstream.
As a normie, thats fine by me. Get sexuality (not love and romance) out of kids faces - that goes for everyone.
Get intense navel gazing about identity out of everyone's faces, it's like encouraging a hypochondria of the soul.
Other than that, live and let live. I think that's the basic normie view
Edited for typo
I agree Pride was radically different this year but think the root cause was corporations. Last year companies in the US were compelled by law to get high ESG scores to prevent being sued by stock holders so they had to contribute so much to LGB causes. This year ESG scores are all gone so companies can be sued for wasting money on LGB causes. No corporate money means Pride month will be smaller and more organic. Probably most members of the community agree grassroots is better than have corporations use your sexuality as a marketing scheme.
I'd be embarrassed and uncomfortable if the whole western world turned the entire month of June into a state-sanctioned corporate-sponsored celebration of my sexual preferences every year. How narcissistic would I have to be to revel in that, even once, still less year after year? There is nothing transgressive about "Pride." It's a bland celebration of bourgeois conformity. If I was gay, I'd be happy to see it die.
When mainstream media run endless versions of incredibly privileged wannabes, Hollywood children and left wing apparatchiks all claiming to be victims of some sort for whom we should march I am left cold. The visceral anger that fuelled the mid 80s pride with the explosion of AIDS related hate was notable not just for its radicalising of much larger numbers than the brave souls who marched in the dark days of illegality but also for the solid and unselfish support lesbians offered to gay men in their hour of need. As an 18 year old in 1985 I had already been beaten up, had police raid clubs I was in, had a knife held to my throat and, at London pride seen those watching the parade spit (literally) on it and scream abuse. I heard so many tragic stories of what people suffered, far worse than I did, and there was a sort of excitement, even elation that we were standing up and saying “no more”. And that's my point I suppose; I don't rate the claimed persecutions of the endlessly expanding victim class as worthy of response and their comfort in the perpetual expansion of hurtiness is dreary; less a rallying cry than a lullaby for babies endlessly wailing.
I ❤️ this post and I’m angry (jealous) at how funny and well-written it is! 🏆 Best of the trilogy, and one of my favorite essays of the year.
SF this year was drab, since perhaps nobody knows what’s celebrated anymore.
Freedom was marked three times on June 26 with the Supreme Court announcing freedom from DOMA, freedom to have sex and freedom to marry afterwards, and well as freedom (announced in protest June 28) to go to a bar and find someone to have sex with and get married to.
Freedom or Liberation (remember gay liberation? Gay lib?) was the point of the event, nothing else.
Since trans already had freedom to mimic women, and queers already had freedom to have heterosexual sex, they had to find something to be disapproved of, so they adopted the sin of pride. The event is now simply self-congratulation of the remarkable skill they had to have their actions be totally legal all the time.
I noticed a lot less fanfare this year, but I had a pretty good vegan pride doughnut yesterday. I hope you guys keep that. The rest can go.
Tell me that you don't like trans folks without saying so: "Traditional Gays and Lesbians—the actual community—have, for the most part, left it behind".
Sylvia Rivera should kick you in the ass.
We can agree on the corporization of the event, though. But your rant is quite poor and shallow.
Conformist gays will never change. They’ll always be there on the sidelines, looking for people to throw under the bus.
It would be only annoying but it has real life consequences. Real people under the bus.
Agreed! It’s an absolutely putrid stance to take. Sadly, the people that most needed to hear what Sylvia Rivera had to say were the ones booing the loudest. Not much has changed.
Also shoutout to Substack for constantly recommending me articles written by assholes like this.
I know its terrible, women fired for saying there are only two sexes, confused children (statistically more likely to be gay, lesbian, autistic or in care) subject to an experimental medical protocol that gets banned everytime a government comprehensively checks it out, incarcerated women raped by men in their jail cells, compelled to call their rapists 'women', losing their sports places to males.
Yes. Real people under the bus.
I'm in favour for civil rights for trans people, I hope they live happy lives free of discrimination. But until the trans movement honestly and fairly addresses the concerns above - by no means an objective list - there's going you be pushing back.
Why would you think there wouldn't be? That's a genuine question I'd like an answer to.
Talking of trans people as a lobby (wtf) of people and not a diasporized community with different realities and without institutions at their charge, and adressing an issue on each one of them for things they haven't done is plain transphobic fallacy. What justice are we suppose to adress? That's insane.
Give me numbers and statistics of your concerns, I'll give you mine.
Until then, the only one pushing people under the bus is you.
Do you not know there are organisations dedicated to pushing for trans rights on the political/policy level?
You must be new
Lol, I'm not even from that imperialist shithole called USA.
You must be new. To the world.
“Tell me that you don't like trans folks without saying so”
You couldn’t be more wrong about that.
You're such a sad and pathetic human being that it is perfectly understandable why you are not able to even grasp such a complex and beautiful thing like being trans.
And above that, you are not even able to understand from a historical perspective the deep impact trans folks have had on the whole LGBT+ movement.
Keep on crying behind your desk.
I do not bear patience with the oppressors.
Pride parades have for decades been about more than acceptance and fairness, they've been a glorification of sex, pure, carnal hardcore sex. And the idea of an entire month of pride is hubristic and frankly ridiculous. We're here we're queer, get used to it is about narcissism, not justice. My son is gay and stable and rational. He would no sooner spend a week hoisting a flag to show everyone how gay he is than wear.a cowboy hat and drive a big truck.
Gay pride even with the stupid and self reverential name once was a necessary bulwark against a myriad of prejudices and laws that discriminated against gays and lesbians. Much of society dismissed them and made them "other". That need to repudiate ugly behavior towards gays is largely gone except in poor communities and foreign born residents. But the latent narcissism that has always existed within Pride is a self fulfilling prophecy. When orgiastic behavior of men was lifted up like it's an actual moral thing, the game was over. Gays have themselves to blame for malformed people taking over Pride. It is a monster of grotesque perversity that caters to people unmoored from reason BECAUSE it always glorified the idea of self gratification at any cost. You don't like it, society? F you, this is about what I want to do! Pride is a monster of sexual depravity and borders on pedophilic. Any sane gay or lesbian owes it to their sense of goodness to ignore it..
Nice line: “done being props in someone else’s tantrum.” Exactly. In big cities in the West Pride has been hijacked by lunatics of the Queers for Palestine variety, and the word queer now applies more to a set of political opinions than to any sexuality.