I finally caught up with episode yesterday and have been thinking about it ever since. You see, I used to work in tech where I was kind of a bridge between the techies, all male, extremely eccentric coders and engineers and everyone else. I did a lot of explaining why a normal user might prefer to click a button rather than simply typing in a line of code then refreshing to see if their change posted. They'd shake their heads and mutter something about how easy it was to simply type in the code, but whatever, and begrudgingly code something for the dummies. Graham Linehan really captures some of this in the IT Crowd. Once in a while one of them would find a girlfriend usually a sort of girly techie, but they seemed to approach the whole relating to people thing in this touchingly technical way. One guy, asked me if I could help him figure out what to wear on a blind date, so I said I'd be happy to. Then he brought his entire wardrobe into the office!! He booked a conference room and we spent a whole lunch time putting together outfits and he, coded it all into a getting dressed app so that he could pick a color or a jacket and the app (we called them "engines" at the time) would spit out several combinations that would work and not clash and not pair socks with sandals! He was one of the sweet ones but there were also some guys who never cut their hair and had to be told to wash and would live in their office cubicle dong god-knows what. They were harder to deal with and could sometimes be dangerously anti social.
I think it's true that this sort of very narrowly focused technical approach to things is more typical of men. You see that sort of A+B = C thinking even in very articulate men who sometimes skirt over the complexity of issues, and to be honest, that can have its place. But tech guys and engineers have these personality traits in the extreme. So in that sense transmaxxing is for them a means to an end.
But here what I keep thinking. We have always had these eccentric individuals but over time societies evolved ways of integrating them. So for instance, (based on a relative) someone who would otherwise be living on his own and isolated might be encouraged to marry, (say by a priest) would be cajoled into dating a woman, and they'd start a family and an otherwise out there person becomes part of a family who love him and tolerate him and gives him a stake in things beyond his narrow focus.
It strikes me that we've lost both the institutions that integrate individuals and socialize them and the culture that makes them feel like they want to integrate and a generosity of spirit that behoves us to make a place for them. In an odd way Transmaxxing seems like a narrow and technical answer to the problem of integration - which is now posed as identity. I think there are some people who don't want to be integrated and who are just kind of disruptive. I'm not sure how people like that were dealt with and found a social niche in the past. I also wonder if our failure to integrate children strongly into manhood, womanhood, etc. has led to more such people. One thing I do know if that people at the extremes need firm boundaries for their own good and for the good of the people around them. I actually think most would just accept them. So no, you can't live in the office, and no, breast augmentation doesn't make you a woman and doesn't solve the problem of more women in IT (and maybe that's not a great thing to begin with). Framing things as "rights" is not just wrong (no one has the "right" to cross sex boundaries) tends to lend itself to this narrow way of thinking. I don't even know if it necessarily helps to ask why someone wants what they want. Maybe just "you might want it but you can't have it". And isn't it interesting that we find it to say "no".
Anyway, I find all this fascinating and it strikes me that a good place to start would be to understand how we integrated people in the past and why and how that changed. For instance, has there ever been a time when so many extremes were together? For instance, was there ever a monastery of men like this? is that why St.Benedict was such a hardass?
If transmaxxing can occur subconsciously, then I think the concept of transmaxxing might apply to my 28 year old son. Forgive the long post, but I think the background is helpful.
At the age of 18, in the last few months of high school, he started identifying as trans and pursuing cross-sex hormones. This occurred completely out of the blue, no history of interest in female activities, clothing, etc. However, it immediately followed the breakup of his then girlfriend, who cruelly dumped him after revealing another ongoing relationship. This was his first physical relationship with anyone. My husband and I speculated that, perhaps, the first stab at a sexual relationship felt like a failure. Instead of licking his wounds and starting over, he became her friend and she began coaching him in girlhood, buying him a purse and giving him fashion advice. Sadly, we wondered if this was his way of holding onto that relationship at any cost. As college approached, the anticipation of adult life was overshadowed (we think) by the obsession of reinventing himself. We tried to be understanding but did not support medicalization and, instead, told him to focus on becoming a functioning adult. I think there was a whole lot of Peter Pan syndrome going on that we had not previously recognized. He was an ADHD kid, homeschooled to compensate, extremely bright, top grades, had a few good friendships with other boys, and excelled in hobbies like robotics, airsoft, and computer science. All of this was tossed aside while he obsessed with transitioning. With little effort and only a couple of hours of 'therapy', he procured androgen blockers/cross-sex hormones (which we couldn't stop because of his age). It was at this point that the real self-destruction began. He quit college after less than a month, started self harming and attempted to take his own life. He found a transman with a boatload of mental health issues, including a super-manipulative personality, and a SJW family that was happy to take him in. He had a pulmonary embolism (side effect of estrogen) and, yet, the unscrupulous doctor kept him on hormones. The transman married him, we believe, not so much for love, but as a way to control his life. (She had already tried to get guardianship even though she was a year younger). He says they have an open marriage. One wonders if there is transmaxxing going on on both sides! He had such a promising future but, since then, has never really worked or pursued further education. A decade has now slipped away. He told me once that he thought he was asexual. He is comfortable with his transman spouse solely supporting the "family" (which includes some other autistic trans kids). He seems otherwise isolated and spends his days and nights on the internet, gaming and imbibing social media. There is no talk of him trying for a job, much less, a career. Recently, he has completely estranged himself from us, despite our efforts to maintain a relationship. He says we make him doubt himself. We used the preferred pronouns and his new name (his spouse helped him do the paperwork to change his first, middle, and last to match hers). This crushed me personally, but it was the cost of having any relationship at all. He once alluded to the fact that I, a woman, got to stay home instead of working a traditional full-time job. He does not remember the fact that I gave up a lucrative STEM job to homeschool him. No matter. He sees womanhood as an escape from growing up. It may also be an escape from sexuality itself. This latter idea would be one I would like to see explored more.
Seems to be an extension of incel. Transmaxxers appear vain, shallow, envious and perhaps even having a deep down hatred of women. Transmaxx seem insecure and are emulating stereotypes of women while overlooking the health and societal struggles women have. Also not realizing the potential long term consequences of altering one's natural body.
I work in the tech industry and this doesn't surprise me, but it does horrify me.
I think it's a result of the disassociation from our bodies that happens when we are too absorbed in online virtual interactions. It's a male reaction to this.
It adds more weight to the argument that transgender ideology is a men's rights ideology.
I am not surprised. I am also starting to hear that straight men are saying they are “gay” when applying for jobs (source is Rob Henderson’s substack). I am a guy who loves men, but loving somebody includes being honest about their flaws. Men have a tendency to be self-centred/clueless about how their behaviour impacts women.
If we were talking about ethnicity or race instead of gender, the discussion around transition and living as one’s “authentic” self would be very different.
“Last week on Gender: A Wider Lens, Sascha Bailey introduced us to the concept of Transmaxxing. This idea seems to open up new pathways of thinking about the motivation behind some males’ desire to transition. Transmaxxing does not fit neatly into the HSTS (homosexual transsexuals) and AGP (autogynephiles, or men attracted to the idea of themselves as women) dichotomy that Ray Blanchard and Michael Bailey have discussed on this podcast before.”
The operative phrase is “some males.” Great skepticism is required when evaluating gender identity concepts that have emerged among the youth who are denizens of today’s online spaces. That’s because, as was previously noted on Gender: A Wider Lens, gender-curious young people have insufficient in-person relationships with individuals who can act as sounding boards for the increasingly fantastical aspects of the gender identities that flash into existence today like rare subatomic particles in a supercollider. Blanchard and Bailey’s HSTS and AGP are so unlike transmaxxers that the former might as well have their origins in a different geologic era.
Unlike transmaxxers, the homosexual transsexual (who, just to be clear, is not simultaneously a gay man) and the autogynephile were either always among us or evolved organically and unselfconsciously within the human population long before the advent of the 20th century movements that brought isolated individuals out of the closet and into newly formed communities of sexual and gender minorities.
In stark contrast, queer theory in effect acted as the progenitor for what must surely be a tiny population of disaffected men, including some incels, who intentionally created a gender identity to quench their grievances and obtain personal and social advantages they believe are otherwise out of reach to them as grossly inadequate males. To use their lingo, they’re getting even with the Chads of this world by becoming Stacy-ish. Social media culture being what it is, it is foolhardy in the extreme to assume that transmaxxing is a real, stable and viable gender identity with a life expectancy beyond the universal Warholian allotment of 15 minutes of fame.
In any case, when exploring the uncharted reaches of Gender Identity Land, four things are indispensable: a skeptical outlook, critical thinking skills, a sound moral compass and easy access to proven experts in the history of feminism, gay rights and gender identity ideology. Without them, a traveler's account of their journey will be unreliable at best and dangerously misleading at worst.
Suffice it to say that none of the key figures we meet in Channel 4’s documentary on "transmaxxing" are equipped to ask the right questions or properly evaluate the information they receive or the situations they find themselves in.
As a domesticated member of the apex predator class, I found Julie's comments at 16:15 "If you are using a system - playing that system to your advantage - that is to be respected" particularly interesting and chilling to my ear. I don't think he realises that that idea, in a world where "maxxing" becomes normalised, could possibly once more unleash the true maxxers - that is, men unfettered by the genetic contract that promotes and sustains the protective instinct in the biological binary and hierarchy across society; men licensed by an emerging moral code that unabashedly condones doing whatever it takes for your own advantage - Gordon Gecko comes to mind!. Transmaxxing sounds like an act of social currency fraud to me, piggybacking on the crumbling mental health of those who don't have the support or foresight not to drink from the poisoned chalice of medicalisation. If our institutions are prepared to sponsor a practice of solipsistic modification like this I wouldn't be surprised if a new feudalism was to emerge - where actual biology will reassert itself - not content for socially constructed versions of itself to be privileged let alone "respected".
I finally caught up with episode yesterday and have been thinking about it ever since. You see, I used to work in tech where I was kind of a bridge between the techies, all male, extremely eccentric coders and engineers and everyone else. I did a lot of explaining why a normal user might prefer to click a button rather than simply typing in a line of code then refreshing to see if their change posted. They'd shake their heads and mutter something about how easy it was to simply type in the code, but whatever, and begrudgingly code something for the dummies. Graham Linehan really captures some of this in the IT Crowd. Once in a while one of them would find a girlfriend usually a sort of girly techie, but they seemed to approach the whole relating to people thing in this touchingly technical way. One guy, asked me if I could help him figure out what to wear on a blind date, so I said I'd be happy to. Then he brought his entire wardrobe into the office!! He booked a conference room and we spent a whole lunch time putting together outfits and he, coded it all into a getting dressed app so that he could pick a color or a jacket and the app (we called them "engines" at the time) would spit out several combinations that would work and not clash and not pair socks with sandals! He was one of the sweet ones but there were also some guys who never cut their hair and had to be told to wash and would live in their office cubicle dong god-knows what. They were harder to deal with and could sometimes be dangerously anti social.
I think it's true that this sort of very narrowly focused technical approach to things is more typical of men. You see that sort of A+B = C thinking even in very articulate men who sometimes skirt over the complexity of issues, and to be honest, that can have its place. But tech guys and engineers have these personality traits in the extreme. So in that sense transmaxxing is for them a means to an end.
But here what I keep thinking. We have always had these eccentric individuals but over time societies evolved ways of integrating them. So for instance, (based on a relative) someone who would otherwise be living on his own and isolated might be encouraged to marry, (say by a priest) would be cajoled into dating a woman, and they'd start a family and an otherwise out there person becomes part of a family who love him and tolerate him and gives him a stake in things beyond his narrow focus.
It strikes me that we've lost both the institutions that integrate individuals and socialize them and the culture that makes them feel like they want to integrate and a generosity of spirit that behoves us to make a place for them. In an odd way Transmaxxing seems like a narrow and technical answer to the problem of integration - which is now posed as identity. I think there are some people who don't want to be integrated and who are just kind of disruptive. I'm not sure how people like that were dealt with and found a social niche in the past. I also wonder if our failure to integrate children strongly into manhood, womanhood, etc. has led to more such people. One thing I do know if that people at the extremes need firm boundaries for their own good and for the good of the people around them. I actually think most would just accept them. So no, you can't live in the office, and no, breast augmentation doesn't make you a woman and doesn't solve the problem of more women in IT (and maybe that's not a great thing to begin with). Framing things as "rights" is not just wrong (no one has the "right" to cross sex boundaries) tends to lend itself to this narrow way of thinking. I don't even know if it necessarily helps to ask why someone wants what they want. Maybe just "you might want it but you can't have it". And isn't it interesting that we find it to say "no".
Anyway, I find all this fascinating and it strikes me that a good place to start would be to understand how we integrated people in the past and why and how that changed. For instance, has there ever been a time when so many extremes were together? For instance, was there ever a monastery of men like this? is that why St.Benedict was such a hardass?
As a now enthusiastic user of wardrobe apps, I think your sweet nerdy guy was ahead of his time!
If transmaxxing can occur subconsciously, then I think the concept of transmaxxing might apply to my 28 year old son. Forgive the long post, but I think the background is helpful.
At the age of 18, in the last few months of high school, he started identifying as trans and pursuing cross-sex hormones. This occurred completely out of the blue, no history of interest in female activities, clothing, etc. However, it immediately followed the breakup of his then girlfriend, who cruelly dumped him after revealing another ongoing relationship. This was his first physical relationship with anyone. My husband and I speculated that, perhaps, the first stab at a sexual relationship felt like a failure. Instead of licking his wounds and starting over, he became her friend and she began coaching him in girlhood, buying him a purse and giving him fashion advice. Sadly, we wondered if this was his way of holding onto that relationship at any cost. As college approached, the anticipation of adult life was overshadowed (we think) by the obsession of reinventing himself. We tried to be understanding but did not support medicalization and, instead, told him to focus on becoming a functioning adult. I think there was a whole lot of Peter Pan syndrome going on that we had not previously recognized. He was an ADHD kid, homeschooled to compensate, extremely bright, top grades, had a few good friendships with other boys, and excelled in hobbies like robotics, airsoft, and computer science. All of this was tossed aside while he obsessed with transitioning. With little effort and only a couple of hours of 'therapy', he procured androgen blockers/cross-sex hormones (which we couldn't stop because of his age). It was at this point that the real self-destruction began. He quit college after less than a month, started self harming and attempted to take his own life. He found a transman with a boatload of mental health issues, including a super-manipulative personality, and a SJW family that was happy to take him in. He had a pulmonary embolism (side effect of estrogen) and, yet, the unscrupulous doctor kept him on hormones. The transman married him, we believe, not so much for love, but as a way to control his life. (She had already tried to get guardianship even though she was a year younger). He says they have an open marriage. One wonders if there is transmaxxing going on on both sides! He had such a promising future but, since then, has never really worked or pursued further education. A decade has now slipped away. He told me once that he thought he was asexual. He is comfortable with his transman spouse solely supporting the "family" (which includes some other autistic trans kids). He seems otherwise isolated and spends his days and nights on the internet, gaming and imbibing social media. There is no talk of him trying for a job, much less, a career. Recently, he has completely estranged himself from us, despite our efforts to maintain a relationship. He says we make him doubt himself. We used the preferred pronouns and his new name (his spouse helped him do the paperwork to change his first, middle, and last to match hers). This crushed me personally, but it was the cost of having any relationship at all. He once alluded to the fact that I, a woman, got to stay home instead of working a traditional full-time job. He does not remember the fact that I gave up a lucrative STEM job to homeschool him. No matter. He sees womanhood as an escape from growing up. It may also be an escape from sexuality itself. This latter idea would be one I would like to see explored more.
Substack really needs an alternative to "like". I am so sorry.
Seems to be an extension of incel. Transmaxxers appear vain, shallow, envious and perhaps even having a deep down hatred of women. Transmaxx seem insecure and are emulating stereotypes of women while overlooking the health and societal struggles women have. Also not realizing the potential long term consequences of altering one's natural body.
I work in the tech industry and this doesn't surprise me, but it does horrify me.
I think it's a result of the disassociation from our bodies that happens when we are too absorbed in online virtual interactions. It's a male reaction to this.
It adds more weight to the argument that transgender ideology is a men's rights ideology.
I am finally seeing a connection to what my son is doing.
I am not surprised. I am also starting to hear that straight men are saying they are “gay” when applying for jobs (source is Rob Henderson’s substack). I am a guy who loves men, but loving somebody includes being honest about their flaws. Men have a tendency to be self-centred/clueless about how their behaviour impacts women.
If we were talking about ethnicity or race instead of gender, the discussion around transition and living as one’s “authentic” self would be very different.
“Last week on Gender: A Wider Lens, Sascha Bailey introduced us to the concept of Transmaxxing. This idea seems to open up new pathways of thinking about the motivation behind some males’ desire to transition. Transmaxxing does not fit neatly into the HSTS (homosexual transsexuals) and AGP (autogynephiles, or men attracted to the idea of themselves as women) dichotomy that Ray Blanchard and Michael Bailey have discussed on this podcast before.”
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The operative phrase is “some males.” Great skepticism is required when evaluating gender identity concepts that have emerged among the youth who are denizens of today’s online spaces. That’s because, as was previously noted on Gender: A Wider Lens, gender-curious young people have insufficient in-person relationships with individuals who can act as sounding boards for the increasingly fantastical aspects of the gender identities that flash into existence today like rare subatomic particles in a supercollider. Blanchard and Bailey’s HSTS and AGP are so unlike transmaxxers that the former might as well have their origins in a different geologic era.
Unlike transmaxxers, the homosexual transsexual (who, just to be clear, is not simultaneously a gay man) and the autogynephile were either always among us or evolved organically and unselfconsciously within the human population long before the advent of the 20th century movements that brought isolated individuals out of the closet and into newly formed communities of sexual and gender minorities.
In stark contrast, queer theory in effect acted as the progenitor for what must surely be a tiny population of disaffected men, including some incels, who intentionally created a gender identity to quench their grievances and obtain personal and social advantages they believe are otherwise out of reach to them as grossly inadequate males. To use their lingo, they’re getting even with the Chads of this world by becoming Stacy-ish. Social media culture being what it is, it is foolhardy in the extreme to assume that transmaxxing is a real, stable and viable gender identity with a life expectancy beyond the universal Warholian allotment of 15 minutes of fame.
In any case, when exploring the uncharted reaches of Gender Identity Land, four things are indispensable: a skeptical outlook, critical thinking skills, a sound moral compass and easy access to proven experts in the history of feminism, gay rights and gender identity ideology. Without them, a traveler's account of their journey will be unreliable at best and dangerously misleading at worst.
Suffice it to say that none of the key figures we meet in Channel 4’s documentary on "transmaxxing" are equipped to ask the right questions or properly evaluate the information they receive or the situations they find themselves in.
(Might be continued.)
As a domesticated member of the apex predator class, I found Julie's comments at 16:15 "If you are using a system - playing that system to your advantage - that is to be respected" particularly interesting and chilling to my ear. I don't think he realises that that idea, in a world where "maxxing" becomes normalised, could possibly once more unleash the true maxxers - that is, men unfettered by the genetic contract that promotes and sustains the protective instinct in the biological binary and hierarchy across society; men licensed by an emerging moral code that unabashedly condones doing whatever it takes for your own advantage - Gordon Gecko comes to mind!. Transmaxxing sounds like an act of social currency fraud to me, piggybacking on the crumbling mental health of those who don't have the support or foresight not to drink from the poisoned chalice of medicalisation. If our institutions are prepared to sponsor a practice of solipsistic modification like this I wouldn't be surprised if a new feudalism was to emerge - where actual biology will reassert itself - not content for socially constructed versions of itself to be privileged let alone "respected".