Never Have I Ever Been Transphobic
clarifying a ridiculous rumor
Ridiculous. It’s truly ridiculous that anyone might need to hear this from me, but because the internet is R-worded like that: I don’t fear or hate, nor have I ever feared or hated, trans people.
I clarify this because as I continue writing a post about conspiracy and the Covid era (a post that I need one more week to satisfactorily complete), I return to the realm of name-calling that I came to know during my online “cancellation” in late 2021. As Redditors baselessly branded me “transphobic” and an “anti-vax nutter,” I found myself amazed at the stupidity of a space I once considered intelligent. More potently, however, I found myself amazed at the power of emotionally-charged labeling to distort the masses’ understanding of a person’s heart.
I care for all people, including trans people. The journey they go through is extremely difficult, and they’re vulnerable. Especially vulnerable are the trans children who’ve been allowed to have their bodies mutilated at ages as young as six or seven. These children (those who don’t stand by such a surgical decision as they mature and for the rest of their lives) have suffered irreparable harm. “Research indicates that by age four, most children have a stable sense of their gender identity” according to AI’s answer to my query just now. “Research,” or the propaganda of academia? Fucking. Ridiculous.
When I was four I expressed a lot of feminine energy, and I actually loved cross-dressing in my Dorothy dress, because I was big into the Wizard of Oz. This was healthy. My view has always been that gender exists on a spectrum and that our place on that spectrum is fluid throughout our lives. I’m grateful to have had a mom who let me explore my gender expression in a healthy way. I’m also grateful that if I’d told my mom I wanted to chop my dick off, she would have responded with the correct answer: “No.”
We humans are changing all the time, and we’re changing with immense volatility in our early years. To allow a child to make an irreversible decision about his, her or their body in the midst of that volatility is categorically wrong. Allowing biological males to infiltrate women’s and girls’ sports has also been categorically wrong. Biological sex is different from gender, and biological sex is real. Whereas gender constitutes a fluid spectrum, sex constitutes a set of discrete categories. Whereas gender expression is always subject to change, sex is determined at birth. Even more than internet insanity and the brainwashing of a word like “transphobic,” I find the struggle of so many people to make this simple distinction between gender and sex truly amazing.
For 99% of reality TV fans who’ve already labeled me “transphobic,” the clarification above may only deepen the anger; they literally can’t hear me. This post isn’t for them. This post is for the 1% who take the time to listen and genuinely think. It’s for people who’ve been told I’m hateful, but can hear me say: I don’t hate trans people.
I respect trans people’s journeys and I respect everyone’s pronouns. I have immense compassion for trans people, non-binary people and people questioning gender identity, actually, because I was once one of those people questioning themselves. I didn’t have to go through a transition, and I don’t pretend to understand that struggle in particular, but I know the struggle of feeling like I’m not what my biology tells me I am. We aren’t our bodies, after all; we are spirits having a human experience in the space suits we call bodies. It’s not my place to say what anyone else “should” or “shouldn’t” do with a body. I personally wouldn’t allow my child to surgically or hormonally alter his, her or their body in the name of gender, but I can sympathize with the impulse.
From compassion, I’d like to share a couple of video journals from early 2022 chronicling my own process of questioning. You saw early 2020 Spencer-turning-Reiman last week, so let’s continue catching up with who I am now by seeing how I related to gender after a purgative Tobacco ceremony and a clarifying Ayahuasca ceremony in the jungle.
I love humans and their processes, including the three-years-younger Reiman I revisit here today, including trans humans and including you. May you find peace in being as you are.
Everything you say in paragraph 5 is supremely logical...and yet so difficult for some people to understand. Your concise and well-written words may help me out in tricky conversations.
In 2021, my youngest (adult) child came out to herself and the rest us as transgender, and it's been a beautiful thing to watch her grow in confidence and comfort in her own skin. I naturally became very sensitive to the whole issue, and nothing you ever said or wrote made me think of you as anti-transgender. Too many people have lost the ability to understand nuance. It's all or nothing with them.
BTW, I defended you on the big "anti-vax nutter" thread on reddit back then—and wore every ensuing downvote like a badge of honor, haha. By the time I came across the post, you were wise enough to have gotten the hell out of there.
Thank you for sharing the video. I appreciate your raw, insightful perspective (didn't love the vomit bucket, though 🤮).
It's terrible to be driven to have to announce that, the world and the internet can definitely be quite... retarded. Obviously, no disrespect to mentally challenged people. Sometimes I wonder if they are going to make other words like idiot, imbecile, or moron politically incorrect too, because they essentially mean the same thing.
Cue the reading of "WHOM DO WE CALL MENTALLY RETARDED?"
"In the early part of this century people differentiated between idiots, imbeciles, and morons, depending on the extent of their mental retardation, with the moron being the least severely involved. [...] It became an accepted practice to relate these three terms to specific I.Q. scores *—idiot for those scoring below 25, imbecile 25 to 50, and moron 50-70/75"
I can't help but research when I write.
But I digress. Truly unaware of your personal scandal of 2021, but not surprising as such, the internet was not a "safe place" for anyone communicating uncomfortable truths made so by people who so desperately wanted to protect their fragile views of the world by insisting that it should be a "safe place" by canceling, censoring, or attacking anyone who disagrees with them. I, for years stayed within dark rabbits holes of fringe conspiracy thinkers, even then to still be attacked back shills with deny, distract, and discredit strategies going off with MSM talking points, but I stayed anon. It was a dark time.
And personally, especially post 2018, I stayed quiet for some time- just observing. One, I was living in Los Angeles. Two, people were too emotionally manipulated and triggered all the time to discuss anything controversial... and I was learning- just let them be wrong. I can't fix everything. Some people aren't going to change. People have to be ready to change. People got scary.
Like the Great Genevieve once said, "You have to see through the noise."
I think things are getting a lot brighter now.
Anyways, I'm so glad to hear to make the distinction between sex and gender. It absolutely baffles me how this is not a part of the mainstream discussion, because it seems so painfully obvious. Gender is just entirely made up anyways, like who decided that dresses were feminine and short hair was masculine? I don't know, but it is just the way it is. And gender-bending was a big thing when I was in college (when I was also clearly and distinctly taught the difference between sex: a immutable biological fact that exists in our cells, our blood, our DNA, and gender: a social construct of entirely made up beliefs on how we think a certain sex "acts").
My guy friends in college (obviously quite the hippie group frolicking in the woods meditating and such), sweet and compassionate discovering their "divine masculine" often wore skirts... because it didn't make them any less of a "man" ...like we were taught growing up: a guy who liked pink or wanted long hair didn't mean you that they were a "girl".
But then the world quickly became crazy.
I feel that so much trouble with gender ideology comes from trauma.
I struggled to my femininity, also from Mother Wounds, and from the poisoning of toxic feminism that has a stranglehold on our culture. I had to relearn to deeply honor and embrace my sacred feminism, instead of trying to be "masculine" all the time... as a young adult desperately driving myself to have a "successful career" while also driving myself into a constant depression... learning as I got older to truly respect men- not compete with them, to trust them to do what they do best... and to stop trying to take the lead.. to not emasculate them.
Yes truly we all have feminine and masculine aspects within. And yes, at our core spirit is formless and entirely without gender. And especially when awakening, we join our masculine and feminine aspects into divine union. This puts our aspects in divine order and balance, and as a result, our truest expression of femininity or masculinity can bloom, flourish and flow outward authentically. For when the feminine is energetically protected by the masculine, her most beautiful self arises. And when the masculine is energetically nurtured by the feminine, his most strong and courageous self arises. It is all done through healing within, these wounds that we carry from family, from society, from our past- that we come into energetic balance, union with self, and the light in our hearts is lit with divine union flame... In this healing, I feel like the perfect partner will find you- for they need you to be healed and in union with your own divine masculine and feminine within, to be truly in Divine Union with them.
I did a great mother healing- essentially I learned that I needed to stop EXPECTING my mother to be who I WISHED she was. That was big. I can now accept my mother as flawed as she is, that maybe she could not have provided me with what I thought... I felt I needed... But now I can offer that to myself, through re-parenting myself. Also, having my "divine masculine" in balance, also healed my "daddy issues" no more fear of abandonment, no more acting out for male attention.
And rebirthing, yes. This is everything.
Lastly, for my most profound psychedelic experience I took with me "The moment is ALL moments, it is EVERYTHING and entirely ME. It is perfect, beautiful, always." I came out of that realizing, there is nothing else I need. I think you might be close to not needing anything else- because you have all the knowledge and wisdom you need. Once you are anchored, and the energy has been brought down into the body- you're good... then we learn to EMBODY the knowledge- the energetic coding- through practice, just BEING, living this moment, every moment, throughout.