The miniature moral panic over “transmaxxing” and the “incel to transwoman pipeline”

“Why are incels turning themselves into girls?” asks a headline on Unherd.com. A blog post on Pirate Wires posits a veritable “Incel-To-Transwoman Pipeline.” Finally, an article on Breitbart, illustrated with a stock photo of a mustachioed man wearing lipstick and nail polish, declares that “a look into a sizable online community reveals the shocking motive behind some men’s desire to identify as women: involuntary celibacy.”

The supposed trend under discussion? Something called “transmaxxing” — the belief, apparently birthed in the incel world, that lonely young men can dramatically improve their lives by “becoming” women. The idea has floated around incel message boards for years, with depressed young incels idly fantasizing that they could make their lives easier and get themselves laid in a hurry if they could magically transform themselves from undesirable losers into hot young Stacies. Now some steeped in incel ideology — who may or may not self-identify as incels — are trying to turn this fantasy into reality.

It’s not clear how much of a trend this really is, how many incels and incel–lites have gone beyond the fantasy to actually transition. But the number is more than zero. And those who have transitioned are making a lot of noise about it. The movement, such as it is, has its own Discord server with 1200 members and comes with its own 76-page manifesto, an exceedingly strange document that features undigested incel complaints alongside glowing “testimonials” on the joys of transitioning that sometimes border on the pornographic.

The central, er, logic of transmaxxing is frankly misogynistic, based on the notion, popular in incel and manosphere circles, that life is simply much easier for women. A list of “potential benefits from transitioning from male to female” that starts off the manifesto includes “being able to extract resources from males,” “people will treat you better if they think you are female,” and “cheaper car insurance.”

Much of the appeal is frankly fetishistic, with the manifesto writer emphasizing the supposed sexual benefits of transitioning–from multiple full-body orgasms to “sexual excitement from having a feminine body.” These benefits are said to accrue regardless of one’s sexuality; the manifesto teases the possibilities of “access to the transbian dating pool,” “being able to attract cis lesbians (if you become attractive enough),” and “being able to attract high-quality males for sex.”

Much of the manifesto reads like cut-and-pasted complaints from an incel message board. “Since females have the upper hand on the dating market, transitioning from male to female will usually improve your options when it comes to getting sex,” the manifesto explains. “Trans-women will benefit from the increasing female privilege.” The manifesto adopts some of the jargon of the Men’s Rights crowd as well, referring to “hypergamy” and “gynocentrism.”

There is, as is always the case with incels, an unhealthy dollop of self-loathing as well. Widespread transmaxxing would be good for society because fewer “incels trying to force females to waste themselves on losers is a good thing,” the manifesto asserts.

Transmaxxers seem to think you can convince yourself to be trans. “If you do not currently feel like living as a female, you might have to work on fixing that,” the manifesto suggests. “Identifying as male or being emotionally attached to a male body is bad for you if being male results in you living a bad life.” The manifesto suggests watching lots of anime with trans content or resorting to “sissy hypno porn” with the supposed power to convert cis straight men into gender-bending “sissies” or trans women. (Transmaxxing is all about trans women; trans men are denigrated or ignored.)

To transmaxxing’s critics on the right, the supposed trend is an example of confused and unhappy young men being seduced into the trans lifestyle. These young men, Breitbart warns, are now “resorting to self-destructive gender transition attempts” so they can “cease being a man altogether.” Apparently agreeing with the transmaxxers that men can hypnotize themselves into becoming women, Breitbart suggests that the existence of the trend “seemingly, if inadvertently, discredit[s] leftist arguments that gender dysphoria cannot be induced, successfully encouraged, or groomed into.”

Over on Mumsnet, an online forum popular with TERFs, some are suggesting that transmaxxing proves that some men are trying to “become women” for frivolous and self-aggrandizing reasons. Transmaxxing, to one commenter there, is

a phenomenon in which young men transition because they can, not because they have dysphoria but in some vague hope of having sex with sympathetic women.

It’s reminded me of Ollie London, who assumed that just because you can do something (in his case have surgery to make him look Korean) it’s okay. No ideological awareness, no ethics, just a why not? kind of attitude.

Another suggested that transitioning had become “just another lifestyle choice like buying a new car or trainers.”

Still another wrote:

Unattractive but entitled young men have every incentive to make themselves seem more interesting and more open to the sympathetic attention of young women who feel sorry for them by pretending to be “trans”.

Unfortunately, the broadly toxic transmaxxing ideology reinforces myths and stereotypes that might convince some to conclude just that. It seems to confirm so many half-baked right-wing and TERFy critiques of so-called transgenderism that it might as well have been invented for that purpose. But no, it appears to be real, another unfortunate product of incel ideology.

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