Self-Hatred is Not a Virtue
Self-Hatred is Not a Virtue
You can’t reinforce boundaries if you don’t think you deserve to have any
After a few years in the Gender Wars, I’ve learned that what upsets gender ideologues more than anything else is the enforcement of boundaries. No, we do not want men in female-only spaces. No, we do not want men in women’s prisons. No, you are not a woman, we don’t see you as one, and you can’t force us to pretend we see you as one.
What I’ve also noticed is that the tactics that these ideologues will use to try and get me to drop my “no” is to attack me as a person. They’ll call me horrible, a bigot, a fascist, and even a Nazi for knowing that sex is, real, immutable, binary, and important. They will invariably attack my appearance, ironically tell me I look like a man, and fling pretty much whatever insult pops into their heads that they think will hurt my self-esteem.
Why? Because gender ideologues know a lot of their support—in particular, the support they receive from women—comes from manipulating women’s low self-esteem. Some of their most fervent support comes from those women who downright hate themselves for having the privilege of being born female while the bepenised women suffer because they weren’t as lucky.
People with low self-esteem are less likely to defend their boundaries because they don’t think they deserve them. I’ve been there. I’ve spent most of my life there. When you don’t have a healthy sense of self-worth, you won’t value your own time, your own comfort, your own sense of security, or even your own very real security. You’ll place others above yourself and, especially as it pertains to the trans movement, you’ll place those above yourself who you’ve been convinced you are oppressing by virtue of your very existence: men who wish they were women.
I will add here that, sometimes, a show of self-hatred or low self-esteem is anything but. Some people use it as a way of garnering sympathy or to signal virtue when they are in fact quite self-centered, if not downright narcissistic. I’m reminded of white women who make self-flagellating TikToks about the work and penance they are doing to dismantle their own inherent racism: what they are really saying is, “look how good I am.” This exists in the trans movement as well but, for our purposes here, I want to focus on the women who support it out of a genuine lack of belief in their own self-worth.
Women eager to showcase their virtue as a way of boosting their sense of self-worth are incredibly vulnerable to letting these men push and run roughshod over their boundaries. For example, they will try to pretend, even to themselves, that they wouldn’t be uncomfortable getting undressed in front of a man in a changing room if he identified as a fellow woman.
While a boundary around letting strange men see us undress should be given, that is no longer the case today. Now, drawing that boundary and actually voicing that boundary requires that women recognize we have every right to feel safe and comfortable in vulnerable and intimate spaces. In fact, we have far more right than a man to feel safe and comfortable in our own spaces. It requires us to not only know but to actively assert our self-worth.
Self-hatred because of a disbelief in one’s own self-worth leads to self-sacrifice. This is why gender ideologues want us to hate ourselves. Women who don’t have the confidence and self-esteem to demand the recognition of their own needs, even in their own spaces, are easy to guilt trip and bully into giving those spaces up. They are made to feel that prioritizing and valuing their own safety and comfort is selfish, and someone who seeks self-worth through the approval of others wouldn’t want to appear selfish.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with asserting your boundaries—in fact, it is the bare minimum of what you should rightfully claim as your own. It is not a selfish thing to do, and it is not a privileged thing to do. You are not oppressing a man by recognizing him for what he is and wanting spaces away from him in certain situations. You do not need to be defensive, you do not need to be sorry, and you most definitely do not need to feel like a bad person.
No one who is asking for what is yours has the right to demand you feel bad for not wanting to give it. He should be ashamed. You should be the one judging him. It is not a virtue to bend to his demands or to capitulate to an entire movement trying to manipulate you and guilt you out of your boundaries and sense of self-worth.
You don’t owe anything to anyone who won’t respect your “no,” and you don’t need to feel bad about it.
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