Editor’s note: The Fifth Column likes to consider itself a battleground for ideas. It has generated several spin-off sites to better represent various demographics. The following OP-ED is going to be considered offensive by many. This is a debate that needs to happen, so rather than limit this piece to The Fem Column’s readership, it’s here on the front page. We would invite anyone who would like to present an alternative viewpoint to the points raised here to submit through the contact page on the site. This is the same contact page you can use to send the inevitable death threats and personal attacks.

Charles Rae stirs the pot once again on the most contentious topic in feminism today. EDIT: This article has also been turned into a video if anyone would prefer to hear it instead.

(TFC) – We’re told that to even ask questions about this ideology is oppressive territory and a denial of people’s identity or existence. Simply asking ‘what makes a transwoman a woman?’ isn’t allowed in the conversation; where all critical analysis is shut down as “TERF thinking” or “transphobic.” Do you dare to take a look at the other side of the argument? To be my partner in thought crime? Here are the top reasons I oppose transgender ideology:

1. Gender identity laws remove sex-based protections for females

I have written about this topic before but I’ll break it down again real quick. If you can’t legally distinguish what a woman is, you can’t protect them. Protecting females requires us to identify females as differentiated from men, which is what legislation such as Title 9 and the ERA (never passed) are based on: sex-based protections. Let’s put these gender identity laws into action: any sports team, leadership position, or opportunity for females could be filled entirely by biological males who identify as women, and females would have no way to legally claim sex-based discrimination. No discrimination could be considered to be taking place. These are the rights and protections women have been fighting for.

2. Transideology denies the existence of females

Transactivists, in order to support their ideology, have now gone down the rabbit hole of trying to convince the world that there is no such thing as a woman or a man, a male or a female. This takes the form of a couple of different arguments. (a) sex is a social construct, (b) penis is female, and (c) intersex proves that dimorphic sex is not real. All lead us to the same conclusion: females are not real people, that being a female or a woman is a feeling or an identity that anyone can have or adopt.

3. Gender doctrine does not allow you to believe in the existence of homo, bi, or heterosexuality

Homosexual means same sex attraction. You cannot identify a homosexual if you are called bigoted for pointing out someone’s sex. If you believe that men who identify as women can become women or already are women, somehow, there is no way for you to understand sexual orientation. In reality, it is not possible for men to identify into female homosexuality (translesbianism). A lesbian is a female whose sexual orientation is towards other females, and transwomen are men. (See #’s 7&8). For further explanation on this issue, watch this youtube video.

4. Gender defenders are medically pathologizing and sterilizing gender deviant children

Adults are putting children who do not adhere to sexist gender roles into gender therapy and intervening with their growth through puberty suppressants. There are many stories on the internet about children who do not conform to the sexist notion that only boys like trucks and only girls like dresses and dolls. Adults are being told to tell their children this makes them transgender instead of just gender non-conforming boys and girls, and to put them on medications they don’t need which sterilize them. Transkids Purple Rainbow Foundation states this explicitly when they tell us of celebrity transkid Jazz Jennings: “Jazz’s bedroom is filled with things one would find in a typical girl’s room: dresses in the closet, pink and purple sheets, and a bed overflowing with stuffed animals. There are also mermaids — lots and lots of mermaids.” This medical transitioning leads to perpetual medical intervention and a wide range of symptoms. This is at a time where we are seeing referrals for gender dysphoria skyrocketing. Clinics are reporting numbers anywhere from tripped in a year to a reported a 28-fold increase in referrals in eight years. This has been covered by several sources. This woman even sued because her child was given gender treatments without her consent. “Medications” such as Lupron cause serious damage to the body and have been allegedly given to children as young as 6 years old.

5. Elective cosmetic surgery is not a human right, it is dangerous, and not a cure for mental illness

There are many heartbreaking accounts of Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS) regret, and blogs such as GenderTrender and Truth-About-Transition are among the few who will even mention such a thing. There are women and men who have detransitioned and they are voices that we never hear of in the mainstream media. And yet, there are laws popping up everywhere affirming and codifying this incoherent ideology into law. In the Canadian province of Ontario, children can be seized from parents if parents do not adhere to gender doctrine. Transactivists, though, have argued that these expensive, harmful medical interventions should be considered a human right and transpeople are oppressed if they cannot transition into their chosen gender identity. In places like Massachusetts, medical mutilation and transitioning legally has to be covered under private health care plans for what GLAD calls “medically necessary gender transition”.

6. Females are being forced to platform transwomen’s fears but ignore and suppress their own

The main argument behind the multinational bathroom debate is that transwomen are afraid to go into the bathroom with men because it puts them at risk. Feminists are being told to accept this as the sole and primary concern, and when they express their own fears of male violence due to the effect of gender identity laws, they are told they are bigoted and transmisogynistic. This is a blatant double-standard, and creates a heirarchy that always prioritizes transwomen over females. Women in North Carolina can rest easy, I guess, knowing that one of the men who championed the bathroom bill in their state was outed as a registered sex offender. It’s not the first time a sex offender has advocated for desegregated female bathrooms, or used this movement to cape so they can prey on others. I actually have a lot of cases in my archive of this happening, too many really.

7. No dude is oppressed because a woman won’t sleep with him (cotton ceiling)

The cotton ceiling is a theory from transgender ideology which tells us that men who identify as women who are rejected by lesbians are being oppressed by them. The “cotton” refers to panties and “ceiling” to the barrier through which these men cannot penetrate. Because we are to accept that “transwomen are women”, we are also supposed to accept that they can be lesbians. When lesbians assert that they are not attracted to people with penises (men), transactivists tell them they are rejecting translesbians as real lesbians and discriminating against them.

8. Calling lesbians vagina festishists is downright unacceptable

Transactivists have gone as far as to say that people who only like a certain sex (previously called being gay, straight, or bi) a genital or penis/vagina fetishist. Transwomen and transactivists have targeted and harassed lesbians for not accepting them as real women and as lesbians. I won’t post the names of the prominent lesbians who have been targeted and de-platformed because I don’t want to submit them to further abuse.

9. Being born female is not a privilege

Cis privilege is a backwards way of trying to convince females that they have privilege for being born a female (which contradicts everything we know about sexism). This list of an alleged 130 privileges “cis” females are born with include everything from wearing the girl’s uniforms in school (regardless of the fact that females have to fight to wear pants) to learning everything in school from the “cis” perspective. Everything about this ideology forces us to ignore sex-based oppression (sexism), and the fact that females do not learn about female history or history from female perspectives, that politics, academia, and social life is male dominated.

10. Females are being targeted, threatened, bullied, fired, harassed, doxed, attacked, and preyed

upon because they don’t believe in this ideology

There are websites and blogs dedicated to this issue. The Fifth Column has published work about violent rhetoric coming from transactivists, as well as the censorship of feminist dialogue and literature. There is a masterpost here tracking attacks and censorship. I could go into detail about the abuse suffered by those who reject gender doctrine, but I think you should see it for yourself. The overall atmosphere is very hostile towards women and violence against them is justified using this ideology.

11. The ideology makes it impossible for women to name their oppressor or oppression



Transactivists are telling women that to speak of their biology or connect their bodies to feminism is bigoted or oppressive against transpeople. On top of that, trangender ideology tells us that anyone can identify into and out of classes of people. If all a man has to do is call himself “women identified” or “non-binary” to distance themselves from the class they belong to, then there’s no way to understand sexism. It would be the same if we said white people could identify out of being white, or rich people could identify out of being rich. No analysis of race would be possible if we were told that transblack people are black and to say they are not is transracism. If others take away our ability to name and identify the differences between men and women, we can no longer understand sexism.

12. This entire ideology is incoherent, anti-female, and anti-reality



This movement is centered around the main tenets of postmodernism and Men’s Rights Activism: women are bigoted if they won’t sleep with men, that women should not have their own protections, that any man should be entitled to women’s space and demand she adhere to his belief system, that there is no objective reality (how else could transwomen actually be women? What are they transing from, and what are they transing to?), that the meaning of words is not graspable, that women’s fears of men are fabricated, and that biology is oppressive. Gender doctrine doesn’t make any sense.

But at the end of the day, please don’t take my word for it. Go out and ask transactivists or your liberal feminist friends a couple of questions. See what they say.