Gender waffle

Probably a good idea that the Guardian not provide for comments to this piece, because it is bound to invite skepticism, if not ridicule, of the whole gender ideology that seems to have leaked out of universities' humanities departments and infected a surprising large number of younger people.  Here's the subheading:

Madison Godfrey inhabits gender beyond a binary, but transition isn’t what makes them trans

Here's part of her piece:

Not every non-binary person labels themselves under the transgender umbrella – but some do. My transness is not about feeling uncomfortable in my body; it is about feeling uncomfortable with the gender that was allocated to this body. Although I was once assigned female at birth, on days when I wear winged eyeliner and a crop top that makes my boobs look great, I am still non-binary. Medically transitioning, sometimes involving hormone therapy or surgical procedures, can constitute an integral part of a person’s journey of gender affirmation – but pursuing this process is not a prerequisite of being trans or non-binary, and does not determine the validity of anyone’s gender identity. Imagining it as a checklist overlooks the barriers often encountered by trans people who want to medically transition – such as inaccessibility, costliness, wait times and stigma perpetuated by some practitioners. To suggest that being trans requires a specific type of transition is to enforce a hierarchy that is ultimately elitist.

The assumption that every trans person wants to transition also reproduces stale discourse that all trans folk feel “born into the wrong body”: a stereotype that shouldn’t be uniformly applied. As poet Sam Rush writes, “I wasn’t born into the wrong body, I was born into the right lesson.” For some people, transitioning is literally lifesaving – but squeezing all trans narratives into a narrow trope erases individual experiences, minimises us into a caricature of ourselves, and is ultimately boring. Trans and non-binary folk inhabit more than one character description. Besides, just because someone pursues transition doesn’t mean they hate their body. Consider the moment when you change your outfit just before leaving the house; it’s not that you necessarily hated the initial fit, you just want to wear something that makes you feel more like yourself.

So, rather than simply acknowledge that some men have apparently feminine traits, and some women have "butch" traits, and may or may not be fully (or partially) same sex attracted with it, and everyone has known this forever; people now spend an incredible amount of time on what is increasing hard for me to not see as an intensely narcissistic endeavour of self analysis and self justification for their own tastes in how they want to present themselves.  

Incidentally, I think the gist of this article is the same line that Eddy Izzard takes:  he has been "out" forever as an occasional transvestite who only sleeps with women, but now he has decided he is "transgender", although one with no problem going forward with penis intact (and, I think, only sleeping with women.)   

This is kind of weird to most people, but harmless up to a point:  it becomes problematic when they insist that we all have to accept a dubious and faddish intellectual framework ("trans women are women!", "being non binary and trans is a thing") and all of its consequences because that's what suits them.

Update:  The column has attracted some comment on Twitter:

 Many are along these lines: