In the gender wars, Billboard Chris is a warrior, dropping truth bombs with military precision and engaging in mouth-to-ear combat on the ground. After placing informative billboards in major cities, he takes to the streets wearing a sandwich board stating “CHILDREN CANNOT CONSENT TO PUBERTY BLOCKERS”. Questions elicit blazes of fact-fire that may provoke shock, awe, or, in our case, nodding agreement. Nina struggles to find something – anything – to disagree about, while Corinna meekly suggests that Chris might burn out at some point. No chance of that! The fight goes on until gender surrenders.
https://www.billboardchris.com/
https://www.statsforgender.org/
Corinna’s Notes
It’s normal for us to have a brief conversation with our guests after we finish recording. Sometimes it’s because we thought of something too late, other times it’s because we were delicately holding back from throwing fuel on a current bit of drama. After we finished recording with Chris, I asked him whether men should be doing more to make detransitioned men feel more included, or whether there should be a “masculinist” movement similar to mirror the support structures feminism provides to female detransitioners. Chris seemed a bit surprised by my question. He said that men already accept other men as they are and that there was no need for what I was suggesting.
A few days later I was killing some time by having a pint in a local brewpub. There was small group of men gathered watching some soccer game on TV. I observed them as I sipped my beer and thought about was Chris had said. I’m not sure.
In my experience, men tend to prefer gathering around an activity (it could be hunting or watercolour painting, doesn’t really matter) and are best able to be open and vulnerable standing shoulder to shoulder.
As for the ‘acceptance’ of detransitioned men… really I think that’s complicated by what drove transition in the first place, but seeking ‘acceptance’ in the company of men can be done by being prepared to partake in some activity or skill and being willing to be party to a respect-based hierarchy. I’ve done it via martial arts as a female. I wasn’t ‘the best’ fighter in my cohort of 98% men because, duh… but I earned a place there because I was committed to excellence as the pros in the group and was willing to take the hits to get there, even when it hurt me more than my sparring partner.
So in one sense, Chris is kind of right but it looks VERY different to the way women support one another and organise themselves. They would rather get on with things as men and welcome anyone who can hold their own. Depending on the detransitioner, it’s highly likely that they struggled to ‘fit in’ with men for a variety of reasons, but primarily because they weren’t able to intuit *how* to, and need some explicit guidance and mentoring to do so… that’s probably where you do need a ‘masculinist’ movement to step up and provide. Fathers and other male elders haven’t been doing it systematically enough for 50 yrs and western culture in efforts to be ‘progressive’ have done away with ‘rites of passage’ for men to everyone’s detriment.
I disagree that men accept other men the way they are. If that were the case, then transwomen wouldn’t need or care about getting acceptance by women as if they were women. I think Chris just doesn’t want to deal with the issue you presented and his response was pretty disingenuous