Did you see the Gender A Wider Lens interview with Sascha Bailey? He told his story about how he was on the verge of transitioning - he would have already but there was a long wait for his appointment with the NHS gender clinic. Anyway he got a girlfriend and one day he was explaining his trans identity to her. She was trying to understand, so she repeated what he’d said back to him to check - at this point, Sascha burst out laughing because he realised how ridiculous it sounded when he heard someone else say it. And just like that the spell was broken.
My conclusion is that if you’re not able to laugh at a subject, then you’ve lost perspective.
Talk about laughing, this is a great line. "By now, they hated life, their parents, and high school chemistry." Thanks Jamie for everything you are doing. Your voice has heart, authenticity and vulnerability that is rare these days.
I’m not quite up to sharing my sense of humor about this travesty randomly in public spaces yet. I think I have occasionally startled my family when I joke about it tho - but how can I not? I’d be grieving all the time for my son lost to this damn cult otherwise, and you just can’t dwell in constant grief. When it gets really bad, I just identify as “Empress of the Universe” with “supreme commander” as my pronouns and declare the transgender movement to be a nonsensical cult. I think I’ll shake this up a bit today and go by “Emperor of the Universe”. Conservation of pronoun energy and hand me my man pills. Keep finding the humor, Jamie - best way to stay sane and strong.
Thank you , Jamie. Humor is, always, the best medicine. Making all things trans so deadly serious is part of the conditioning to make us fall in line. Your bravery to admit when you were wrong and to work so tirelessly to undo the damage, is laudable. May we all be so humble and willing to admit our faults, because everyone last one of us has made big mistakes.
And I love Cori! His wit, his calm, his unshakeableness, his grace under pressure and willingness to reach out in a kind and peaceful way to those who would just as soon as spit on him are admirable. We need more humans like the two of you doing this important work!
I think humor itself will be seen as a subversive activity. Facial recognition cameras will detect anyone walking around with an illegal smile and they will be subject to interrogation and then set to a camp for inclusivity indoctrination.
Laughing is a release and incompatible with fear which is necessary for authoritarian regimes so people will police themselves. I need to work more on this idea.
My transsexual friend is a playwright and around the period when tranny became “the t-slur,” she was working on a play called “Trailer Trash Trannies.” The outcry was such that she had to rename it.
She was complaining recently about how that word had become verboten, referencing that story. I mentioned that my philosophy towards language is to model the language I’d like to see more of, trusting that if people find it good and useful, they’ll pick it up and start using it themselves. And she looked at me and said, “I’m sorry, but I value my life.”
My (old school butch lesbian who knows and loves that she's a woman) girlfriend and I riff on the ridiculousness of trans identity (and all so so SO special identities) all the time. It's a big part of our internal couple dialogue.
And it's definitely if we couldn't laugh, we'd cry, because she is one of the many, many, many extremely gender nonconforming lesbians of a certain age who'd have been sterilized and mutilated if she was a child or young adult now.
ETA: I think it's worth it for all of us former gender warriors (including myself to a certain degree up til about ten years ago) to consider why we fell for it so hard, why humor became "literal violence"... For me it was part of the larger "social justice," identity politics framework that morphed into a kind of religious ideology. The mission was so serious, so deadly serious, no way joking about it was OK. (Except for "punching up," of course, the ONLY allowable humor.)
Love this! Not to make it about me BUT —I just posted an interview with a lovely terf comic this morning in which Jamie features prominently, so I have to share it here:
The preposterous Stonewall figure of 10 per cent of LGB people having been subjected to conversion therapy is a prelude to what they hope will be new UK government legislation banning all conversion therapy. What Stonewall would like, of course, is for parents and doctors to be banned from questioning their children’s wish to transition. But I suspect the new law, if it happens, will amount to very little. There are some pretty nasty homophobes in churches who no doubt put gay and lesbian members under cruel psychological pressure to deny their sexuality. But it’s likely that the coercive methods of conversion therapy that will be caught by the new law are illegal already.
YouTube Heretic Andrew Gold some time ago made the connection between exorcism, trans & cults based on his work in South America, he's also interviewed Sascha & other detransitioners, there's sadly nothing funny about it (though I've seen him & Helen Joyce share a few laughs & why not?).
Interestingly, I first learned this lesson about humor and the thought-police back in the 1970s.
One of my two best friends, a gay boy, turned 18 and moved to Seattle, where he was quickly groomed into extreme misogyny by gay men in their 40s and 50s. For years throughout high school, the three of us had kept each other in stitches with black humor about our extremely traumatizing adolescence. But suddenly, he stopped laughing. My other best friend, a young lesbian, noticed it before I did: "He's been taught he has to hate women, and it's killed his sense of humor."
Years later, long after he'd left us for his new friends, he moved home to die of AIDS. His misogynist gay crowd completely abandoned him, and she and I were the only friends who came to see him, to say good-bye and "I love you."
Ever since, I've known that hatred makes a person humorless.
Did you see the Gender A Wider Lens interview with Sascha Bailey? He told his story about how he was on the verge of transitioning - he would have already but there was a long wait for his appointment with the NHS gender clinic. Anyway he got a girlfriend and one day he was explaining his trans identity to her. She was trying to understand, so she repeated what he’d said back to him to check - at this point, Sascha burst out laughing because he realised how ridiculous it sounded when he heard someone else say it. And just like that the spell was broken.
My conclusion is that if you’re not able to laugh at a subject, then you’ve lost perspective.
Love that!
TERFs have the best sense of humor. We have to. If you haven't, google "transphobic toddlers."
Trans-exposing really funny
This latest incident will hopefully peak many people!
Talk about laughing, this is a great line. "By now, they hated life, their parents, and high school chemistry." Thanks Jamie for everything you are doing. Your voice has heart, authenticity and vulnerability that is rare these days.
I’m not quite up to sharing my sense of humor about this travesty randomly in public spaces yet. I think I have occasionally startled my family when I joke about it tho - but how can I not? I’d be grieving all the time for my son lost to this damn cult otherwise, and you just can’t dwell in constant grief. When it gets really bad, I just identify as “Empress of the Universe” with “supreme commander” as my pronouns and declare the transgender movement to be a nonsensical cult. I think I’ll shake this up a bit today and go by “Emperor of the Universe”. Conservation of pronoun energy and hand me my man pills. Keep finding the humor, Jamie - best way to stay sane and strong.
Also - agree completely on Cori! Absolute gem!
Thank you , Jamie. Humor is, always, the best medicine. Making all things trans so deadly serious is part of the conditioning to make us fall in line. Your bravery to admit when you were wrong and to work so tirelessly to undo the damage, is laudable. May we all be so humble and willing to admit our faults, because everyone last one of us has made big mistakes.
And I love Cori! His wit, his calm, his unshakeableness, his grace under pressure and willingness to reach out in a kind and peaceful way to those who would just as soon as spit on him are admirable. We need more humans like the two of you doing this important work!
Every once in a while I laugh so hard it surprises me. I then realize I have come a long way and am grateful for that!
I'm waiting for humor to be declared hate speech, a colonizing oppression. Laugh while you can.
Wonder if there will be a rubric for determining which jokes are misdemeanors vs felonies, to say nothing of how hard you laughed at said joke.
I think humor itself will be seen as a subversive activity. Facial recognition cameras will detect anyone walking around with an illegal smile and they will be subject to interrogation and then set to a camp for inclusivity indoctrination.
God , I miss John Prine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiKF72QdNZI
Misdemeanor?? Laughing at people is LITERAL VIOLENCE, Syl.
Well, you just damn well made me laugh pretty hard! Thank you so much and lock me up! 🤣
Laughing is a release and incompatible with fear which is necessary for authoritarian regimes so people will police themselves. I need to work more on this idea.
I cannot do so under my name but I love quipping on substack about gender. Humor therapy helps me stay sane.
My transsexual friend is a playwright and around the period when tranny became “the t-slur,” she was working on a play called “Trailer Trash Trannies.” The outcry was such that she had to rename it.
She was complaining recently about how that word had become verboten, referencing that story. I mentioned that my philosophy towards language is to model the language I’d like to see more of, trusting that if people find it good and useful, they’ll pick it up and start using it themselves. And she looked at me and said, “I’m sorry, but I value my life.”
As I've said before on other substacks "there's comedy gold in they them there hills".
My (old school butch lesbian who knows and loves that she's a woman) girlfriend and I riff on the ridiculousness of trans identity (and all so so SO special identities) all the time. It's a big part of our internal couple dialogue.
And it's definitely if we couldn't laugh, we'd cry, because she is one of the many, many, many extremely gender nonconforming lesbians of a certain age who'd have been sterilized and mutilated if she was a child or young adult now.
ETA: I think it's worth it for all of us former gender warriors (including myself to a certain degree up til about ten years ago) to consider why we fell for it so hard, why humor became "literal violence"... For me it was part of the larger "social justice," identity politics framework that morphed into a kind of religious ideology. The mission was so serious, so deadly serious, no way joking about it was OK. (Except for "punching up," of course, the ONLY allowable humor.)
You're not supposed to laugh in church.
Love this! Not to make it about me BUT —I just posted an interview with a lovely terf comic this morning in which Jamie features prominently, so I have to share it here:
https://open.substack.com/pub/jennypoyerackerman/p/episode-32-featuring-australias-sacha?r=l5fbr&utm_medium=ios
The preposterous Stonewall figure of 10 per cent of LGB people having been subjected to conversion therapy is a prelude to what they hope will be new UK government legislation banning all conversion therapy. What Stonewall would like, of course, is for parents and doctors to be banned from questioning their children’s wish to transition. But I suspect the new law, if it happens, will amount to very little. There are some pretty nasty homophobes in churches who no doubt put gay and lesbian members under cruel psychological pressure to deny their sexuality. But it’s likely that the coercive methods of conversion therapy that will be caught by the new law are illegal already.
YouTube Heretic Andrew Gold some time ago made the connection between exorcism, trans & cults based on his work in South America, he's also interviewed Sascha & other detransitioners, there's sadly nothing funny about it (though I've seen him & Helen Joyce share a few laughs & why not?).
Interestingly, I first learned this lesson about humor and the thought-police back in the 1970s.
One of my two best friends, a gay boy, turned 18 and moved to Seattle, where he was quickly groomed into extreme misogyny by gay men in their 40s and 50s. For years throughout high school, the three of us had kept each other in stitches with black humor about our extremely traumatizing adolescence. But suddenly, he stopped laughing. My other best friend, a young lesbian, noticed it before I did: "He's been taught he has to hate women, and it's killed his sense of humor."
Years later, long after he'd left us for his new friends, he moved home to die of AIDS. His misogynist gay crowd completely abandoned him, and she and I were the only friends who came to see him, to say good-bye and "I love you."
Ever since, I've known that hatred makes a person humorless.
The cat dies? Talk about a plot spoiler.