The piece is a middle-of-the road anti-cis rant, notable only for being a typical example of how they are pushing their agenda. A few thoughts.
- The alliance between the homosexual community and the trans community doesn't seem to be an easy fit. In fact, the whole alphabet soup of the alliance (LGBTQ and whatever else has been added in the last two years) is shaky. In a large way, tolerance encompasses the group but gays want tolerance for alternate forms of sexual expression and transsexuals want tolerance for a conception of the human form and substance that really is unlike what we've seen before.
- Feminists have a shaky alliance with transsexuals because of their shared belief in the division between sex and gender. However, it's doomed to fail before the gay union falls apart. Transsexuals change their sex to fit what they perceive to be their gender--in their minds, gender is fixed while biology is not (think about that for a second) while feminists believe that gender is a social construct. This, and it doesn't look good to have men becoming women when the feminist message is that women are victims of our culture.
- As the trans-rights issues become more prominent, it's important to realize that, even in this article, the count in America is 700,000 trans-identifying people. That's 1 in 500. Gay marriage laws only affected the privileges of, at most, 4% of the population; this community is on .2%. Take that with you as the media rants and raves.
- Equally important is to take the propaganda's historical and cross-cultural citations with a big grain of salt. Same-sex attraction has been threaded throughout history. Sex-identity-confusion is very rare.
- Attaching this movement to history is useful because a simple run through our living memory makes a strong case that, put bluntly, gender identity disorders seem to be made up. I see a parallel with the rise in Mulitple Identity Disorders from the 70s to the mid-90s. People didn't seem to have it until they've heard of it. Both conditions being entirely self-reported, its easy to parrot the accepted narrative and receive validation.
- My prediction is that the coming years will see a rise in those that identify as trans and even more so as homo- or bisexual. (Particularly the latter. I imagine we'll see a lot of "retired" bisexuals who've settled into heterosexuality as they've gotten older.) My ugly reason for this? It gives alienated kids a reason to be special. This will be hard to prove, of course, but it's my instinct--how many adolescents flirt with communism, anarchism, goth culture, hippie culture and the like because it creates a more concrete identity as being different from those around them. By increasing acceptance of the fringe, we're increasing the options for the disaffected.
- The focus of the article is that wanting to change one's sex is not a sign of mental illness. I like the sputtering disbelief that Kevin D. Williamson brought up Body Identity Integrity Disorder. For one, the only difference I can see between wanting to cut off one's leg and wanting to cut off one's penis--in order to feel that one's body matches one's internal perception of it--is that the latter has a lot of gender theory behind it. For another, it's a great example of a leftist using the "I can't believe you said that" shaming tactic. How dare you compare two like things! And in the next paragraph, we get sex-change operations compared to body modification--only a square would discriminate against that.
- This is the work in the semantic world we've been seeing a lot of. In the largest frame, so much chatter from the Left is about human and civil "rights" as if these are tangible objects. Americans believe in rights--they're written right into our most seminal documents--so we have a hard time arguing against more and more "rights" being discovered and inscribed into law. In this formulation, a "sex change" is nothing more than a "body modification" like a nose piercing. We have a "right" to modify our body, so why stop at complete removal and change of our genitalia?
- But the argument is betrayed in this line:
I imagine he opposes less radical body mods like corset piercings as well—or maybe he doesn’t, since he finds them less icky, which seems to be his criteria for who deserves to be labeled “sick” or “normal.”
I used the example of nose piercings, a common alteration. Writer Harry Cheadle just had to use corset piercings, in which several dozen rings are put through the skin on one's back. Those rings are then looped through with ribbon or something similar and pulled, mimicking the tie to a corset. Please note how boring and conventional Cheadle finds this modification, nothing nearly as cool as splitting one's tongue in half. The goal, it shouldn't surprise you to learn, is not to advance the transsexual but to push back at the normal people. It's more r/ selected, passive-aggressive warfare--find your enemy's enemy and help him. Cheadle can't help but identify himself as one of the sophisticated people, who finds a corset piercing an everyday occurrence and has the most up-to-date attitudes toward transsexuals.
- Finally, note this:
Why do so many trans people try to commit suicide? Could it have something to do with the widespread prejudice they face—i.e., people like Williamson calling them mentally ill?
Traditionalists and others on the Right need to find an answer to this kind of question right away. This is the same motor that's behind anti-racism, feminism, communism and anything that's out to destroy society--the slightest whiff of intolerance for the cause du jour is enough to wreck everything. The rate of suicide among post-op transsexuals couldn't be that they are profoundly disturbed individuals who have made irreversible changes--no, it's that someone, somewhere, doesn't like what they've done and they can't live with the intolerance.
No comments:
Post a Comment