The Uncomfortable Truth About Identity Formation

How Has Gender Identity Naturally Altered Over Time? 

6 to 8 min read

Views on Gender and Sex... 

In the eighties, some psychologists described men as experiencing 'autogynephilia' if they were sexually aroused at the idea of being a woman. If sexual cross-gender fantasy can entice male to female transition it may reveal one psycho-sexual example for what we call gender identity. This theory differs to what the World Health Organisation advised (WHO), along with people like Judith Butler, who insist gender is a social construct based on shared beliefs. For me, such ideas are poppycock, given for starters, how beliefs can be altered! Human biology causes gender. I might be wrong, blinded by my own biases, so let's explore... 

How is Gender Constructed? 

We are unique sheep and truthfully, I think men transition for various reasons. Masculine and feminine traits arise like bio-determinants. Therein exists part of a dichotomy; a bottom-up emergence of gender, rooted in biology, versus the top-down imposition of gender which is developed by ideology. From a spiritual perspective, if you have the soul of a female, but you exist inside the body of a male, does your inner ghost or essence have a vagina and breasts? If not, how do you recognise your soul is female? 

Innate beliefs and urges to be the opposite sex can be deep-seated impulses that drive our behavior. Yet, there is always more to the story! Consider, for instance, this 2020 study identifying significant links between neurodevelopmental conditions like autism and gender diversity. Society is an expression of our collective biology, it operates way above the underpinnings of our molecular bedrock. 

The Game of Branding Ourselves

Centuries of scientific and medical data collected and analysed has established norms: the majority of us identify as binary gender because that is the default socialised state of affairs. However, we could imagine a contrarian society challenging our conception of gender like we see forming today. Gender identity classifications impact on how humanity might express itself, while also confusing gender pay gap, statistics for example. Be that as it is, a redefined concept of something is not the thing in itself; gender might be a top down regulation one day, but in reality it has always been a bottom up expression of humanity and tensions seem to exist somewhere in between. 

Being Particular... 

Clothing primarily served as a necessity to cover and warm a person. Eventually, it become a legal requirement to cover nakedness. Attire was designed to fit male and female shapes before any gender definition was considered. Of course, over time, with trends in fashion and style coming and going, male and female clothing did propagate attraction, attributing gendered qualities from our sex and shape. 

Do We Become What We Say We Are? 

When our words that describe the way we feel get logged as symptoms by doctors, it helps to form new medical diagnoses over time. After Gender Identity Disorder was introduced, it was changed to Gender Dysphoria to remove the connotations of mental illness which did not fit the desired outcome. Why psychiatry failed to re-name Personality Disorder is mind boggling. Nothing could be more invalidating to a person than that label, don't you reckon? 

Pushing For Illogical Change... 

An Italian university lecturer I know was reprimanded for using the word 'mother' instead of ' birthing person' when teaching her students. Gender-based political correctness is autocratic and often unwelcome. English, her second language, did not include pronouns like: ze/hir/hirs and xe/xem/xyr—which are non-medical, non-traditional and un-academic. 

In the future, we will see growing complaints of new gender based problems in our health statistics. New and exciting identities will be constructed in LGBTQ+ circles and promoted across social media—this could become mainstream. 

Are On-line Horror Characters For Kids Smart?

YouTube Kiddy Horror Characters: Nostalgia and Childhood Gone Wrong? 

5 min read

Let’s get something straight: there’s a fine line between horror and whatever these indie characters are doing online. All the kids in our extended family circle try to sneak them on the telly through YouTube while we aren't watching; we're under instruction to switch it over to baby shark! Personally, it's not just because they’re brain rot or possibly copyright theft, but because they fail to land the one thing horror should do—frighten people properly! 

1. Sonic The Hedgehog: Not a Horror Icon, Stop It For The Love Of God! 

Look, really, Sonic is the blue speedster we grew up with in the 90s, but yeah, I get it—re-inventing him as a corrupted nightmare was too tempting. But here’s the thing: Sonic was never meant to be some bloodshot-eyed cartoon monster. His charm came from his speedy playability on a megadrive or a master system, not whatever this is!

It's not really too much different to some laptop wizard remodelling the video game character Rayman into a noncy cannibalistic news reporter. Would this evil iteration of Sonic beat Batman in a VSBattle? Just don't fall into this desperate barrel scraping bottom feeding! These thing's are just a tad silly, held together by the gloopy hands of YouTube pedagogical manipulation. 

2. Huggy Wuggy: Cute? Yes. Terrifying? Well. . . No, It's Cute??

You can’t just slap creepy eyes on a lanky soft toy and call it horror. Listen to this in your head as you read it: 'Huggy Wuggy from Poppy Playtime'. Yep, Huggy Wuggy from Poppy Playtime was supposed to be a scary ass toy, a bit like Chucky (who did it properly) —but it falls into the same trap as Sonic doesn't it? Can this guy take out Jack the Ripper? Oh please, who was Jack anyway? You shouldn't take these characters out of context, should we? Surely? Either way, what's more concerning is the adult fan of this stuff. Individuals who'll invest time and effort to edit or even create dark versions of the original poppy playtime; it ends up on YouTube for kids to watch. 

We can see the clear kid-like simplicity with Huggy Wuggy, which doesn’t seem to belong in horror, which should an adult thing. If I was a kid and wanted real horror, I would have searched for Resident Evil online instead, or secretly played my old man's Alan Wake 2. Don't be fooled, because, some of these YouTubers are making disturbing content you wouldn't want in your kids head! Years ago, we watched erotic porn cartoons as kids called Felix the Cat, much like this stuff, it went under our parent's radar as we watched it crying with laughter. 

If one of our group as kids proposed, 'Shall we watch some horror about plush stuffed toys with sharp teeth?'  We would have dropped it. Why? We snuck in real horror films like Freddy vs Jason, not that animatronic bear... actually forget that! However, if I realised this stuff was more sinister than it really looked, it might have tempted me as a kid. 

3. Siren Head and Slenderman!

Sirenhead and Slenderman were supposed to be creepy internet urban legends. I can get the slender man. Sirenhead looks very unusual for starters, and makes no sense, unlike Vladek Spiegelman from Maus who is an actual mouse with significant context well worth reading! However, at the end of the day, Slenderman and the Siren dude both feel like they belong in an indie horror meme. Absolutely, the Slenderman had some kind of depth, a bit creepy and there's lore going on, admittedly, he has raised my eyebrow in the past, but in comparison to proper horrors like Get Out, Hereditary or The Conjuring, they are a tad juvenile. 

Maybe someone can put Slenderman on Naked Attraction?  It's another crossover idea, that weird collision of childish horror and questionable adult pretensions might workout one day, don't you agree? I had to turn off Sirenhead as he was maniacally squelching soldiers into mincemeat underfoot. We searched for child controls as well as some kind of YouTube filter, but no joy. Nope. 

Why These Indie OCs Miss the Point! 

Horror is supposed to evoke fear in the mind of adults, we shouldn't bring sinister ideas to kids. We should be their prime source of fear. Discipline. Either way, these kiddy YouTube horror videos make you cringe: adult-interloper horrors are switched off in our house for a reason. 

Season 13 'From' 

What do you think? 

Are such kiddy horrors really brain rot? Am I just being a dinosaur about this new wave of 'horror' emerging from the bowels of social media? Share your thoughts in the comments. Are these compelling characters or are they hijacked? 

Is Society an Internet Construct?

A First-Hand Reflection of the Internet: From Napster to Neo-Pronouns

5 min read

The Wild West of the Web

Remember how crazy we thought we were online by downloading dodgy music at 56k? Now we're debating what a woman is. How did we get here?

Retrospectively, the promise of free media offered by 'the web' in the late 90s went above many peoples heads! To surf the net made no bloody sense at all, but it sounded cool! I remember being curious by those bizarre secret agent-like codes starting with 'www' all over the place.

90s nostalgia

I still remember the cardboard cut-out of Carol Vorderman standing in our local library, luring in the unready. This was years before her cheekbones and mammary glands had mysteriously swollen! I.T savvy librarians frustratedly instructed the older generations, as well as any computerphobe who wanted to press a few buttons. 

Digital Identity

Every family had its digital pioneer — people who dived headfirst into the unregulated chaos of peer-to-peer platforms like Napster, LimeWire, and Kazaa. Piracy was poorly regulated then, but yet greatly hindered by that impossible dial up which took forever. 

P2P and Pirate Goldmines

Hours of P2P and Ebaum's world videos burnt into my psyche: I watched the insanity of the world for the first time. One particularly woman filmed herself shit out an entire, fully intact water melon! How? Why? She might've been promoting herself as a Cartell Mule? I had no idea, but still, I wanted to see more. 

A New World

The mainstream UK news, most of our regular broadcasting had always been so robotic, dressed up to the point of absolute fakery! This emerging world wide web put everything on the table, self-inflicted digital amputations, bosh! We all marvelled at one video of a man's failed home castration. They weren't all 'ha-ha!' funny, but eye-opening. The world had to be tested, I had to speak to people from all parts of the globe.

Making Money Out of Nero DVD Burning Software

Computers weren’t just a way of enjoying music, but a gateway to piracy! Dodgy dealers earnt a little pocket money off this digital black market, sharing and trading. A five minute song took long enough to download; waiting for a full on film, well, that was a real labour of love!

The Pixel Peep Show

This advent of porn bloomed into existence and we got used to ignoring the constant feed of naked bodies, the full-on sex acts spewed across your monitor as you ignorantly show your mother your promise of any music she could ever want! 

From VHS Swaps to Dial-Up Downloads: an Awkward Evolution

A million miles away from borrowing an overplayed porn VHS from a work buddy. We didn't watch porn as often as today! Surfing the web back then had fewer restrictions, with no such things as neo-pronouns either!

Some Of The Following Generations Have Issues! 

Here Are Five Ways The Internet Changed Life Forever:

1. Information Democracy: It destroyed traditional gatekeepers of knowledge, taking it from the hands of publishers, broadcasters, and institutions. 

2. Identity Fluidity: We could explore, create, and experiment with identity in ways that are more difficult in physical communities. 

3. Attention-Seeking Economy: Views, likes, clicks have become a hugely valuable commodity. Algorithms are optimized to keep us interested.

4. Death of Privacy: The anonymous internet transitioned became a system that simply harvests our thoughts, preferences and passions as a product product! We are data for marketing and political strategy.

5. Tribal Realignment: The World Wide Web facilitates all manner of supportive communities, but also echo chambers that radicalize and divide.

Confusing Cyber Cluster 

We can see how the internet has facilitated mass clusterings of right wing politics, for example: facebook groups like, we are the 52%, YouTube channels such as GBN News or Matt Goodwin attract like minded people to take action or debate. However, I think something similar happened with other demographics.

From Outsider to Insider: The Role of Uniting People

People with autism and certain mental health conditions, like gender dysphoria, for example, or a personality disorder often feel different or even estranged from other people. Rates of ASD diagnoses have increased. In the 90s and early noughties, anyone confused by their identity or gender could suddenly go online and meet others and share their experiences.

Finding The Tribe: How the Internet Became a Haven for Neurodivergent Voices

That's exactly how todays groups manifested, and subcultural identities like Emo's, Goths and what-have-you developed neo-pronouns on-line. It rapidly became a social construct, and then, a marketable product and finally an inexorable motion! 

From What Soil Did This Flower Grow? 

Before the internet, neo-pronouns — those things everyone has to use to avoid prosecution — never existed. People do try to deal with their identity struggles by latching onto sub-cultural labels and constructs that are being promoted as legit, which in all fairness, isn't necessarily from medical science! 

The Comfort Bubble: How Online Spaces Became Reality-Proof Bunkers

So now we have animal people! Individuals who snipe at anyone who won't agree that a man can give birth. Their echo chambers, powerful processing plant of ideologies of which woke lawmakers continue to rationalise and make money. 

Anti-Woke Sentiment Became a Movement of Its Own

Giving the stamp of approval to these social constructs is simply saying: bio-evolutionary human history is all wrong! Comedian's are like: Yeah, right! We'll just go with whatever you woker's made up from now on! Er no! 

The Future is Change: Something Wicked This Way Comes! 

These pronouns will become archaic, a dinosaur orthodoxy, another monster will rise from the depths of the internet and replace everything! It will be fresh, simplified and practical, maybe retro like something before the world wide web! Share or leave a comment, it'll be nice to know your thoughts!