Last summer, as I set out on a cross-country trip to cover what the New York Times excitedly declared the largest protest movement in US history, one realization quickly became apparent.
Transgender ideologists insist that there are more than two human sexes and that what a person “feels” or “believes” their sex to be trumps their biology. This is unscientific nonsense. Humans – like all mammals – have bodies optimized to produce one of two possible gametes: sperm or ovum. There is no third gamete, hence there is no third sex.
From the assertion that a person’s sex is whatever that person believes it to be, comes the dictum: “trans women are women”. In other words, we are asked to accept that a person born biologically male is really a female if he believes himself to be. This belief, this faith-based assertion is no different than any anti-scientific religious catechism. Individuals have a right to those beliefs, but they don’t have the right to impose them on others.
And that is the key difference between the fight for gay/lesbian rights and modern transgender ideology. The former asks only the right to live in peace, unharassed and unencumbered. The latter (trans ideologists) go a step further, demanding not just civil and human rights for themselves – a concept that all thinking people should support – but also that everyone must accept their unscientific religious doctrine (that “trans women are women”.) They demand not only the right to believe that personal thoughts can trump biological reality, but that EVERYONE ELSE MUST CONCUR with that belief and allow it to be codified in law and public policy, regardless of the affect that might have on women, gays, lesbians, children and democratic rights more broadly. In such a world the book "The Emperor’s New Clothes" could never have been written.
If we as humans did not have the developed mental resources we do, we definitely would be "inserting peg A into slot B" as a completely natural, biological response to our environment. Pretending otherwise is indeed nonsense.
This is a very good basis for average citizens an understanding of the current zealous ideology floating into their world from out of nowhere. There should be a basis for categorizing and discussing this movement. Even more importantly their shallow demands should not be catered too. Great article.
One of the interesting and refreshing things about working in the Really Bad Neighborhood high school is that this "movement" gains no purchase. We don't even do anything for 'pride month'. March is women's history month ... and it is barely mentioned. It isn't because nobody cares.
It is because we have bigger fish to fry, especially after our Rulers determined that a virus with a 99+% survival rate was the reason to shut schools and small business down so that even more capital could flow upward. Graduation rates and attendance have plummeted. Anxiety / Depression / Disaffectedness ... all of these and the concomitant suicide rates have spiked. Two of my seniors have tried to end it all. Apparently Black Lives Matter (tm), but not these two black women on my class roster. "COVID is a thing" is the usual response when I bring it up.
My point is that only in a decadent, well fed, comfortable society could this level of volume about an infinitesimally small portion of the population do such a thing. It has, for whatever reason, grabbed the foundation funded megaphone and foisted its message into everyone's ears. If the American dollar and / or the Foundation money to stop, we would hear very little from these people.
And that's how it is in the Bad Neighborhood. Those tweets by the ACLU guy mean nothing in the hood. He is nowhere, and nobody, and his views would be violently opposed, quietly by black women, and loudly by black men were he to come into the area and get loud. Same for the white liberal female holding that sign in this article's picture. Her comfortable life allows her to feel the warm glow of advocating for whatever the current trend is that gets her social media cred.
This contrived topic and movement will nearly vanish when our Overlords decide it has run its course and the big shots and the big money go elsewhere. They must constantly force it to the forefront, until a better 'divide and conquer' method emerges, and then that will be in our face. I wonder what it will be?
It was just a couple of years ago that the whole "argument" behind transgenderism was to assert a distinction between biological sex and gender identity, such that someone's gender identity might differ from their biological sex. Opponents of transgenderism would reject any distinction between the two. With whiplash-inducing rapidity, transgender ideologues are now the ones rejecting a distinction between sex and gender, and they are so far past any thought of persuasion that there's no need to explain why.
I've been contemplating a response to the demand that "cisgendered" people state their preferred pronouns: "I don't subscribe to the gender binary; therefore, I have no preferred pronouns". That covers all the bases right?
I still don't know what cisgendered stands for. More importantly, I couldn't be bothered to look it up. Moving beyond my sense of apathy for cisgendered into preferred pronouns would be a hilarious leap that will never, ever happen for me.
Humans are born into 1 of 2 reproductive (sexed) states, male or female. Male and female distinctions are easily observed at birth. Intersexed conditions are not a 3rd sex. Intersex does not negate or supersede the fact that humans evolved as a species with 2 immutable sexed states. "Trans" is not a sex at all. Trans is either a persona, a disorder or the bullying arm of the "Gender/Sex Reassignment" industry. http://www.the11thhourblog.com/
Trans ID is 100% based on stereotypes. How is one "trans" in a nudist colony? How is one trapped in the wrong body? What are the signs if not based on stereotypes? Boys must like trucks, girls must like dolls? Boys must not like flowers or fashion, girls must not like insects and climbing trees? Boys wanting long hair and drawn to makeup are girls? Girls into short hair and blue jeans are boys? These are simple questions Trans activists will not answer. This is when they scream PHOBE! Very telling.
Trans activists first tried to gobbledygook up the word "gender" as they knew denying biological sex differences would be a hard sell initially. Now activists like Chase Strangio, have upped their rhetoric, blatantly denying that there are differences between males and females, that the individual determines their sex/gender, not evolution. Crazy. Trans ideology is the left's creationism and the "Gender/sex reassignment's industry cash cow.
Females are female because of their biology. Males are male because of their biology. Denying the immutability of biological sex harms all humans, no matter how they outwardly express themselves. Magdalen Berns https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uphZ0PLXbEw
These protests contain many individuals who simply need a movement to belong to, because it gives an otherwise empty life some meaning. This became clear during the Summer of Shouting last year, when I watched a white dude in a "Black Trans Lives Matter" shirt block traffic on behalf of "Extinction Rebellion."
Especially so when the only people on the roads during the lockdown were essential workers, the majority of whom consisted of working class delivery drivers and cashiers. Way to stick it to the Man! :/
A quibble: It hasn't been legally established the George Floyd was killed. Better to say that he died in police custody.
As for gender identity ideology, I'll agree but I can see a bit of the other side of the argument. The mere use of the word "ideology" may suggest to some that the whole trans thing is just something that a person can adopt at one point and reject at a later point, just as some one-time communists later turn neoconservative, or whatnot.
interesting article particularly on the physical absurdity of the conflation of sex and gender. surely this is the 'madness of crowds' de jour. but only fit to merit the word 'dogma'.
The core of this whole issue has nothing to do with “ideology” or personally defined identity. It has to do with what entity, religious, governmental, or social, gets to control how any person behaves. If there is no control, or prohibition, on how one behaves or how one chooses to identify him or her self then there is no issue to be debated. If, however, some entity (again religious, governmental, or social) enacts some proscriptions on how one is to be allowed to engage with the world in which one lives then a definite issue arises. But it is necessary to understand that the essence of that issue is not a matter of the choice of an individual as to what he/or she wants to do or of their “ideology” or conception of how they themselves fit into the world. The essence is how the prevailing power structures (in the sense of predominant religious authorities, or political authorities, or social groups) decide to impose their notion of what is acceptable, socially appropriate, or constitutes “sin.” The issue of the sexual identities and proclivities of individuals (even Gov Cuomo) rests not with them but with the strictures that the society, through the power dynamic, has chosen to impose on them.
Do you consider people to be "blank slates"? In other words we do as we do and are as we are because society "tell" us? Put differently, doesn't genetic inheritance affect how we are? (and remember, we too evolve, so genetic inheritance goes way into deep time...tens of millions of years).
Actually, when he says that he isn't advocating for violence or harassment, that is exactly what he means. I know this because of the context of the article. It is literally in the written word. That said, questioning an orthodox belief system may make some people uncomfortable. But it is completely ludicrous to suggest that variable outcomes are his responsibility.
As it turns out, activists still need to use persuasive arguments to advocate for their position. Rejecting all forms of critical analysis because it may result in real or perceived harm is disingenuous horseshit. Critical analysis can actually allow people to strengthen what they advocate for and to persuade others.
No one on this earth is obliged to accept anyone's worldview simply because their convictions are sincere. Our capacity for critical thought and introspection is a profoundly important part of being human. People have an incredible capacity to accept new ideas but evidence and dialog is a necessary component for this. Otherwise, you end up with empty platitudes. .
Statements of fact stand up to scrutiny. That is the basis for what is considered to be factual. When new evidence is presented, that may change whether something is considered to be a fact or not. Rejecting critical analysis is dogmatic. Claiming that it may cause harm, regardless of intent, is passive aggressive and insincere.
That, in turn, suggests that the position isn't defensible or that advocates lack the capability to be persuasive. Unfortunately, no one knows which one it is because those of us who are not a part of the trans community are unable to have a dialog with advocates without being accused of causing harm.
Honestly, how could anyone expect that to work out well? I haven't lost my capacity for critical thought just because someone else had an epiphany. It isn't reasonable or pragmatic on any level. Persuading virtue signaling self-absorbed children at the NYT is one thing but I can assure you that the rest of the country isn't going to fall in line so easily.
If anything, activists should embrace dialog with someone like Michael Tracey. He clearly has the desire and capacity to openly engage with trans activists in good faith. That doesn't mean that he is obliged to blindly accept dogma anymore than anyone else is. It is, after all, a dialog between people who are exchanging ideas.
Advocating for something carries the burden of proof. It needs to stand up to scrutiny. Expecting blind submission to an activist's stated reality isn't reasonable. More than likely, activists will continue to vilify those who do not meet their arbitrary standards of being an ally. Ironically, that will result in fewer allies and more harm, violence and harassment to that community.
Transgender ideologists insist that there are more than two human sexes and that what a person “feels” or “believes” their sex to be trumps their biology. This is unscientific nonsense. Humans – like all mammals – have bodies optimized to produce one of two possible gametes: sperm or ovum. There is no third gamete, hence there is no third sex.
From the assertion that a person’s sex is whatever that person believes it to be, comes the dictum: “trans women are women”. In other words, we are asked to accept that a person born biologically male is really a female if he believes himself to be. This belief, this faith-based assertion is no different than any anti-scientific religious catechism. Individuals have a right to those beliefs, but they don’t have the right to impose them on others.
And that is the key difference between the fight for gay/lesbian rights and modern transgender ideology. The former asks only the right to live in peace, unharassed and unencumbered. The latter (trans ideologists) go a step further, demanding not just civil and human rights for themselves – a concept that all thinking people should support – but also that everyone must accept their unscientific religious doctrine (that “trans women are women”.) They demand not only the right to believe that personal thoughts can trump biological reality, but that EVERYONE ELSE MUST CONCUR with that belief and allow it to be codified in law and public policy, regardless of the affect that might have on women, gays, lesbians, children and democratic rights more broadly. In such a world the book "The Emperor’s New Clothes" could never have been written.
If we as humans did not have the developed mental resources we do, we definitely would be "inserting peg A into slot B" as a completely natural, biological response to our environment. Pretending otherwise is indeed nonsense.
This is a very good basis for average citizens an understanding of the current zealous ideology floating into their world from out of nowhere. There should be a basis for categorizing and discussing this movement. Even more importantly their shallow demands should not be catered too. Great article.
One of the interesting and refreshing things about working in the Really Bad Neighborhood high school is that this "movement" gains no purchase. We don't even do anything for 'pride month'. March is women's history month ... and it is barely mentioned. It isn't because nobody cares.
It is because we have bigger fish to fry, especially after our Rulers determined that a virus with a 99+% survival rate was the reason to shut schools and small business down so that even more capital could flow upward. Graduation rates and attendance have plummeted. Anxiety / Depression / Disaffectedness ... all of these and the concomitant suicide rates have spiked. Two of my seniors have tried to end it all. Apparently Black Lives Matter (tm), but not these two black women on my class roster. "COVID is a thing" is the usual response when I bring it up.
My point is that only in a decadent, well fed, comfortable society could this level of volume about an infinitesimally small portion of the population do such a thing. It has, for whatever reason, grabbed the foundation funded megaphone and foisted its message into everyone's ears. If the American dollar and / or the Foundation money to stop, we would hear very little from these people.
And that's how it is in the Bad Neighborhood. Those tweets by the ACLU guy mean nothing in the hood. He is nowhere, and nobody, and his views would be violently opposed, quietly by black women, and loudly by black men were he to come into the area and get loud. Same for the white liberal female holding that sign in this article's picture. Her comfortable life allows her to feel the warm glow of advocating for whatever the current trend is that gets her social media cred.
This contrived topic and movement will nearly vanish when our Overlords decide it has run its course and the big shots and the big money go elsewhere. They must constantly force it to the forefront, until a better 'divide and conquer' method emerges, and then that will be in our face. I wonder what it will be?
It was just a couple of years ago that the whole "argument" behind transgenderism was to assert a distinction between biological sex and gender identity, such that someone's gender identity might differ from their biological sex. Opponents of transgenderism would reject any distinction between the two. With whiplash-inducing rapidity, transgender ideologues are now the ones rejecting a distinction between sex and gender, and they are so far past any thought of persuasion that there's no need to explain why.
I've been contemplating a response to the demand that "cisgendered" people state their preferred pronouns: "I don't subscribe to the gender binary; therefore, I have no preferred pronouns". That covers all the bases right?
I still don't know what cisgendered stands for. More importantly, I couldn't be bothered to look it up. Moving beyond my sense of apathy for cisgendered into preferred pronouns would be a hilarious leap that will never, ever happen for me.
Lucky you, if you haven't yet been asked to state your preferred pronouns. "Cisgendered" means simply, "fine with the equipment you were born with".
Humans are born into 1 of 2 reproductive (sexed) states, male or female. Male and female distinctions are easily observed at birth. Intersexed conditions are not a 3rd sex. Intersex does not negate or supersede the fact that humans evolved as a species with 2 immutable sexed states. "Trans" is not a sex at all. Trans is either a persona, a disorder or the bullying arm of the "Gender/Sex Reassignment" industry. http://www.the11thhourblog.com/
Trans ID is 100% based on stereotypes. How is one "trans" in a nudist colony? How is one trapped in the wrong body? What are the signs if not based on stereotypes? Boys must like trucks, girls must like dolls? Boys must not like flowers or fashion, girls must not like insects and climbing trees? Boys wanting long hair and drawn to makeup are girls? Girls into short hair and blue jeans are boys? These are simple questions Trans activists will not answer. This is when they scream PHOBE! Very telling.
Trans activists first tried to gobbledygook up the word "gender" as they knew denying biological sex differences would be a hard sell initially. Now activists like Chase Strangio, have upped their rhetoric, blatantly denying that there are differences between males and females, that the individual determines their sex/gender, not evolution. Crazy. Trans ideology is the left's creationism and the "Gender/sex reassignment's industry cash cow.
Females are female because of their biology. Males are male because of their biology. Denying the immutability of biological sex harms all humans, no matter how they outwardly express themselves. Magdalen Berns https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uphZ0PLXbEw
These protests contain many individuals who simply need a movement to belong to, because it gives an otherwise empty life some meaning. This became clear during the Summer of Shouting last year, when I watched a white dude in a "Black Trans Lives Matter" shirt block traffic on behalf of "Extinction Rebellion."
Blocking traffic as a form of direct action has to be the epitomy of an empty platitude.
Especially so when the only people on the roads during the lockdown were essential workers, the majority of whom consisted of working class delivery drivers and cashiers. Way to stick it to the Man! :/
A quibble: It hasn't been legally established the George Floyd was killed. Better to say that he died in police custody.
As for gender identity ideology, I'll agree but I can see a bit of the other side of the argument. The mere use of the word "ideology" may suggest to some that the whole trans thing is just something that a person can adopt at one point and reject at a later point, just as some one-time communists later turn neoconservative, or whatnot.
interesting article particularly on the physical absurdity of the conflation of sex and gender. surely this is the 'madness of crowds' de jour. but only fit to merit the word 'dogma'.
The core of this whole issue has nothing to do with “ideology” or personally defined identity. It has to do with what entity, religious, governmental, or social, gets to control how any person behaves. If there is no control, or prohibition, on how one behaves or how one chooses to identify him or her self then there is no issue to be debated. If, however, some entity (again religious, governmental, or social) enacts some proscriptions on how one is to be allowed to engage with the world in which one lives then a definite issue arises. But it is necessary to understand that the essence of that issue is not a matter of the choice of an individual as to what he/or she wants to do or of their “ideology” or conception of how they themselves fit into the world. The essence is how the prevailing power structures (in the sense of predominant religious authorities, or political authorities, or social groups) decide to impose their notion of what is acceptable, socially appropriate, or constitutes “sin.” The issue of the sexual identities and proclivities of individuals (even Gov Cuomo) rests not with them but with the strictures that the society, through the power dynamic, has chosen to impose on them.
Do you consider people to be "blank slates"? In other words we do as we do and are as we are because society "tell" us? Put differently, doesn't genetic inheritance affect how we are? (and remember, we too evolve, so genetic inheritance goes way into deep time...tens of millions of years).
Ya know, just because you say you aren't advocating violence or harassment doesn't mean you aren't actually advocating violence or harassment.
I'm surprised I have to explain these things.
Actually, when he says that he isn't advocating for violence or harassment, that is exactly what he means. I know this because of the context of the article. It is literally in the written word. That said, questioning an orthodox belief system may make some people uncomfortable. But it is completely ludicrous to suggest that variable outcomes are his responsibility.
As it turns out, activists still need to use persuasive arguments to advocate for their position. Rejecting all forms of critical analysis because it may result in real or perceived harm is disingenuous horseshit. Critical analysis can actually allow people to strengthen what they advocate for and to persuade others.
No one on this earth is obliged to accept anyone's worldview simply because their convictions are sincere. Our capacity for critical thought and introspection is a profoundly important part of being human. People have an incredible capacity to accept new ideas but evidence and dialog is a necessary component for this. Otherwise, you end up with empty platitudes. .
Statements of fact stand up to scrutiny. That is the basis for what is considered to be factual. When new evidence is presented, that may change whether something is considered to be a fact or not. Rejecting critical analysis is dogmatic. Claiming that it may cause harm, regardless of intent, is passive aggressive and insincere.
That, in turn, suggests that the position isn't defensible or that advocates lack the capability to be persuasive. Unfortunately, no one knows which one it is because those of us who are not a part of the trans community are unable to have a dialog with advocates without being accused of causing harm.
Honestly, how could anyone expect that to work out well? I haven't lost my capacity for critical thought just because someone else had an epiphany. It isn't reasonable or pragmatic on any level. Persuading virtue signaling self-absorbed children at the NYT is one thing but I can assure you that the rest of the country isn't going to fall in line so easily.
If anything, activists should embrace dialog with someone like Michael Tracey. He clearly has the desire and capacity to openly engage with trans activists in good faith. That doesn't mean that he is obliged to blindly accept dogma anymore than anyone else is. It is, after all, a dialog between people who are exchanging ideas.
Advocating for something carries the burden of proof. It needs to stand up to scrutiny. Expecting blind submission to an activist's stated reality isn't reasonable. More than likely, activists will continue to vilify those who do not meet their arbitrary standards of being an ally. Ironically, that will result in fewer allies and more harm, violence and harassment to that community.
Can you provide one example of how any of this article even promotes belligerence, yet violence?
It doesn't.
The superclass global elite have normalized their perverted preferences and ideology. And I guess Chapter 1 in Romans (KJV) is "transphobic violence."