new

TIF classification project - open to feedback

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While we classify TIMs as AGP and HSTS, I've noticed that there is a lack of consistent TIF typology. So, I went ahead and made one.

My sources: almost a year of undercover activity on trans forums (3 different characters, 2 TIFs, 1 TIM), 5 real life run-ins with TIFs (all types), a talk with a female victim of a predatory one, a predatory TIF in my extended family.

Warning: upsetting issues ahead - rape, fetishism, violence, mental illness

Self-hating

Motivated by societal distress caused by being female. Lesbians, tomboys and/or rape victims. The most known and arguably common type. Most of detransitioners come from this group.

Sexuality: Either homosexual (“straight” for them) or so obliterated by trauma so as to be completely non-existent (“asexual”). If not asexual, then either masochists/submissive, or “vanilla” (not perverted).

ID: Most are “men”, but there is a significant minority of those who ID as sexless (agender, nonbinary, neutrois etc.). They don’t really want to become men, as much as they want to stop being women.

Detransition rate: Very high. Feminism empowers non-conformists, lesbians, and victims, and so serves as a safe place for them to go. Furthermore, the general society views “I just wanted to be accepted” as an acceptable feminine motivation. The one exception are those who are 10+ years into it, didn’t get any nasty side effects from procedures, and have a partner and a job. They’ll stick with the devil they know.

Common mental disorders: Anorexia, dysmorphia, anxiety, depression, autism.

Interests: Vary a lot. Plenty of quiet, bookish types. Often some sort of stereotypically masculine sport. Not that many of them are otherkin or furries, but plenty are therians. They often shun stereotypically feminine hobbies they genuinely enjoy and push themselves into things men in their lives do.

Transition: Baggy clothes, short haircuts, binding breasts. Normal male or unisex names. Hormones. Mastectomy and hysterectomy are common, but phallus is usually not constructed. They mumble something about “not good enough yet”, but it’s actually because they want to desex themselves and find penises disgusting.

“Goals”: Either a normal, respectable dude, or a sexless being.

How to approach: Gentle conversation is the best. Affirm that loving women is okay, that any “masculine” interest is cool, that she didn’t deserve her assault/trauma – without calling her a woman outright. She has a lot of baggage attached to that word. Slowly build a friendly relationship, gently bring up side effects of hormones and surgeries. Once you see doubt, direct her towards detransitioners.

Kweer

Motivated by desire to be special and shallow aesthetics of the gender-special movement. Often there is a mild autoandrophilic element (caused by too much yaoi).

Sexuality: Straight (or “uwu gay boys”). Some of them identify as bisexual, but it’s hard to determine if it’s genuine bisexuality or attraction to manly men and she/her “femboys”. Fetish-wise, into a lot of weird stuff. Furries, tentacles, latex, transformation, this sort of thing, often as a switch (both the doer and the target of the act). Sometimes come across as pedophilic, due to inappropriate conduct around children, sharing NSFW information with them etc. This, however, usually comes from the “sex positive” ideology, rather than genuine pedophilia (this is more of a “predatory” thing).

ID: Actually, a minority of them are “men” (I’d say 20-30%). A lot of them call themselves half man, half woman (bigender, genderqueer etc.) or “genderfluid”.

Detransition rate: Complicated. Young and “out” only on tumblr? Will go away. 25+ and a head of a LGBTQRSTUVWXYZ organisation? Not likely to back down. With every IRL thing done in the trans direction (coming out, hormones, surgeries, legal stuff, joining organisations), the chance of detransition drops significantly.

Common mental disorders: Narcissism, borderline, schizotypal, maladaptive daydreaming, sometimes a mild form of psychosis.

Interests: Cartoons, especially anime, drawing, making jewellery (with various obscure flags, to sell on Etsy). Lots of them are otherkin – the more special, the better (fairies, dragons, deities etc.), furries are also well-represented among them. Some of them are self-proclaimed witches or “spiritual” types. Overall they have a very poor relationship with reality.

Transition: Loads of flag patches, colourful hair, either binding without packing or packing without binding (uwu androgyny). Batshit insane names, often neopronouns. Further transition varies, from all the way to “my body is a boy’s body because it belongs to a boy!” Often get tattoos and piercings.

“Goals”: Feminine bottom gay boy, handsome-but-still-pretty top yaoi boy with a hairless body of a Greek god, or a sparkling hermaphroditic alien who is adored by everyone.

How to approach: Don’t feed her delusions. Don’t give her undue attention. Allow her to talk about her gender fluctuations and kin memories, and just go “mhm”. No “omg, you’re so valid”, but no “you’re fucking crazy”. Include her in women-only spaces and events, keep her away from queer spaces/websites. Practical activities, like horse riding or camping are great ideas. The younger she is, the easier for her it will be to shake it off.

Predatory

A complicated, mostly invisible type. Born with psychopathic traits, which causes them to not socialise as female fully (as they lack empathy, enjoy hurting others etc.) and therefore relate to male culture strongly.

Sexuality: Orientation wise, all over the scale, mostly in the middle. Usually call themselves bisexual or “pansexual”, very often “aromantic” (incapable of feeling love). Sadist/dominant, with fetishes like rape, impregnation (with them in the male role), mutilation, cannibalism etc. Often pedos or into bestiality. Two huge elements in this type’s sexuality are what I’d call autohybristophilia – attraction to the image of oneself as a male killer/rapist – and corruption fetish – the fantasy of destroying someone, body and mind, and “remaking” them - they enjoy the thrill of exposing children to fetishes or “cracking eggs”.

ID: Almost all “men”.

Detransition rate: Zero, or at least very low. I've never met one that had any regret or doubt, and I've never met a detransitioner who used to be this type. They seem to more self-assured that the other types, have less interest in fitting in, women usually find their company repulsive or dangerous, mainstream society doesn't find "it got me off" a feminine motivation...

Common mental disorders: Psychopathy, various paraphilias.

Interests: There is always some strong interest in the grotesque/macabre, horror, gore etc. They like people getting hurt, and watch horror films or even real-life gore like most dudes watch porn. Some are otherkin (usually something vague like “monsterkin”, in stark contrast to kweer ones, who have entire characters), but they are less active in the community. Other interests vary wildly, they usually don’t obsessively hide “girly” interests like self-hating ones do.

Transition: Normal male fashion, packing (stuffing underwear) with or without binding. Names might be normal or batshit insane, they are usually less anal about pronouns, whatever they use. Go all the way – hormones, all surgeries etc. Very common of them to take up weightlifting and get tattoos. A lot of them use special huge strapons that transfer sensation or even ejaculate (anatomic autoandrophilia) instead of or before surgery.

“Goals”: The potential to hurt outweights aesthetics. Typically the “ideal body” has huge muscles and a big penis, but it might be very ugly or even nonhuman. Worth mentioning, this is not the same as a revenge fantasy some women (including self-hating TIFs) indulge in. That is “I don’t have power, but if I could hurt the people who hurt me, I’d have power at least over that situation”, this is “I like hurting people, and if I had power, I’d hurt them even more/without consequences”.

How to approach: sigh Tell me if you know. I'd argue it's better not to aproach them - you'll get laughed at at best, pulled into a weird mind game at worst. Stay away from them in real life. Out of 3 I met face to face, two were sex offenders and one beat me up. If one is your child - if she's really young, you might teach her empathy and emotional regulation, otherwise you're probably out of luck.

Notes:

It's possible for one to be two or all types at once. It's possible for one to pretend to be the other for various reasons. It's possible for a non-trans woman to have some traits of one or more type (if she's at risk of transition and/or a TRA ally).

There are two additional factors, both for TIMs and TIFs, - DSD/intersex conditions (which can cause weird socialisation) and actual delusions ("I'm a man on an astral plane" or "I have ovaries, but my doctor can't find them").

Hey, cynical lurkers - none of those are "true trans".

I'm open to constructive criticism.

I can talk about my experiences if you're curious.

Today I am one of the most loathed figures on the internet. My speaking events have been cancelled. I have been sued. The police have visited my home and former friends have turned their backs on me.

Yet I’m the man who wrote the much-loved Father Ted! Why is it that I’ve become so suddenly unpopular? The thought crime for which I have been tried and found guilty is that I believe biological reality exists.

I believe women are females. I believe everyone should be able to present themselves as they wish but that women’s hard-won rights must not be compromised for the benefit of men suffering body dysphoria – which is to say men who feel they are stuck in the wrong body.

Most of all, I believe that gender ideology, in its currently fashionable form, is dangerous, incoherent nonsense.

I believe trans people –those unfortunate enough to suffer body dysphoria – are having their condition exploited and trivialised by abusive, controlling and authoritarian trans rights activists. And I think women and children are suffering because of it.

Worst of all, I say so, loudly. This makes me Public Enemy No 1.

I make my arguments forcefully because I’m concerned, sometimes with humour because I’m a comedy writer and often while cursing, because I’m Irish. It’s the humour they hate most. It’s kryptonite to these activists.

I’m 51 and I’ve never seen anything like the authoritarianism on display, the desperate desire to shut down the conversation. No genuine civil-rights movement advances in secret but this one has as one of its mantras ‘NO DEBATE’.

So, while we are in a world where male sexual offenders in bad wigs assault female prisoners, where rape crisis centres are defunded because they won’t admit men and where a bloke in a full beard tells schoolchildren that he’s a lesbian, we’re informed with venomous aggression that we may not talk about any of it.

No debate? Oh, there’s going to be a debate all right.

The popular opinion among my detractors is that I’m cherry-picking negative stories to mask a hatred of trans people. In fact, I first came to this debate because I saw women being bullied, losing their jobs and suffering the most intense online harassment I’d ever seen, and I wanted to stand beside them.

Also, as a writer, I couldn’t watch as one of the most important words in the English language, the word ‘woman’, was being changed against the will of those whom it defined.

Suddenly, everywhere you looked, women were being erased, insulted or endangered. Amnesty referring to pregnant women as ‘pregnant people’. Productions of The Vagina Monologues closing because they excluded ‘women who don’t have vaginas’. Women’s toilets disappearing from public life – even though they were introduced to ensure that women could have a public life.

Worst of all, I saw the lack of compassion or empathy for the vulnerable women who are often at the sharp end of the new Gender Theocracy.

The four women attacked in prison by a male sex offender in 2018 (who everyone had to call ‘Karen’ or they were committing a hate crime) are four women too many.

Women in prison often have a history of abuse at the hands of men. Whatever they’ve done, they are entitled to safety from the type of men who helped put them there.

Rational people – and that includes rational trans people – are dismayed by those who have now taken over trans activism.

Body dysphoria is no longer seen as central or even necessary for those who decide to adopt a so-called trans identity.

To see just how elastic and meaningless the word ‘trans’ has become, one only has to look at the definition adopted by the Stonewall lobby group: ‘Trans people may describe themselves using one or more of a wide variety of terms, including (but not limited to) transgender, transsexual, gender-queer (GQ), gender-fluid, non-binary, gender-variant, crossdresser, genderless, agender, nongender, third gender, bi-gender, trans man, trans woman, trans masculine, trans feminine and neutrois.’

Neutrois, I discovered, literally just means ‘androgynous’. So androgynous people are trans. That’ll be news to Bake Off presenter Noel Fielding.

Under Stonewall’s definition, everyone is trans, and no one is. A cross-dresser such as banker Philip Bunce, who adopts the female persona ‘Pippa’ for only a few days every week, nevertheless receives the honour of being named by the Financial Times as one of its top 100 women in business.

This was seen as progress, a step forward for women. In fact, it is an insult to women and to those suffering from body dysphoria.

In order to maintain the fantasy that our sex is unconnected to our bodies, the truth must be bent and beaten in the fire of academic language. That is why trans activists talk about sex being ‘assigned at birth’ – an abuse of language, if ever I heard one.

Is the sex of a newborn ‘assigned’ by a capricious midwife? Of course not. Rather it is observed and recorded as a matter of fact.

‘Assigned’ is one of the more successful hijackings of English achieved by gender ideologues, yet you will hear it parroted across many organisations from the NHS to the BBC – the sort of institution where you really would expect people to know better.

Before I knew how toxic trans rights activism was, I wrote an episode of my Channel 4 sitcom The IT Crowd with a trans character. The response was more venomous than I was used to, but as bad as it was, at least I was allowed to write it. That was in 2013.

In 2020, such an episode would never air. And that is because the first generation who didn’t go out to play have grown up to become clones of Mary Whitehouse. The new puritans.

I am not new to outrage. There was fury on the part of some when we first released Father Ted but the executives we had were made of strong stuff and ignored the attacks. The same goes for The IT Crowd, Brass Eye, Black Books, and I guess a few comedies I haven’t worked on.

I’m worried we’re entering an era of pre-chewed, prissy art that offends no one. But it’s not comedy writers who are the victims of all this: it is women who are the real casualties.

Gender ideology is a disaster for women. They are expected to make room for men in their changing rooms and their safe spaces.

They are being robbed of the language to describe their reality by unintelligible academic ‘gender experts’, by teenagers encouraging each other online, by parents who are profoundly mistaken, and by well-meaning people who, confused by the ever-changing terminology, still believe they are defending what used to be called transsexuals.

All these forces working together are, whether they know it or not, providing a smokescreen for fetishists, conmen and misogynists to pursue their own agenda.

In years to come, we will look back at this scandal, at the ruined bodies, the confused crime statistics, the weakening of safeguarding and the rollback of women’s rights and wonder how it was left to go on for so long.