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Bari Weiss Interview: Courage in the Face of Book Burners
I’m once again recommending a podcast from Bari Weiss. This one is an interview with Abigail Shrier, author of Irreversible Damage: Teenage Girls and the Transgender Craze, her piece of investigative journalism (remember when that used to happen?) on the topic of the exploding “trans” movement afflicting young girls.
I have purchased the book but not yet read it. I’ll undoubtedly write about it after I do.
I think the transgender movement is the forced confession of wokism, serving the same function as it did under Stalin, that of forcing compliance and breaking the spirit of those who dare speak out against an obvious fiction. It’s O’Brien’s “2+2=5,” something so absurd that conceding it, even under duress, is a betrayal of one’s own conscience.
The podcast can be heard here: Honestly with Bari Weiss: Courage in the Face of Book Burners.
Ms. Shrier’s descriptions during the podcast of truly Orwellian progressive public school policies regarding gender identity are chilling and need to be heard. And this comment of hers was, I thought, spot-on (31:35):
The major political battle ahead of us is not conservative versus liberal. It’s really conservative and liberal versus the woke. They don’t believe in free speech. They don’t believe in equal protection. They don’t believe in due process.
PS I don’t normally subscribe to online services; there’s simply too much worth reading that doesn’t require a subscription. But I just subscribed for a year of Bari Weiss’s substack, because I want to support her efforts. I think she is distinguishing herself as a standout voice for free speech and free inquiry.
Published in Culture
No, not in the sense I mean — not in a political sense. I don’t think of political and social ideas as being inherently right or wrong — virtuous or otherwise — but rather as being more or less what I prefer, and more or less efficacious at bringing about the kind of world in which I want to live. I think I’m probably an outlier in this regard.
The woke seem to think that their conclusions — about politics, about culture, about reality, about identity — are not only true in some objective sense, but virtuous, right in some naturalistic, absolutist sense. I think that is what fuels the outrage with things like so-called “dead naming” and “mis-gendering.” Those things are offensive because they “deny someone’s reality.”
They actually use that phrase: “you are denying my reality.” It’s a snowflake thing, a weird irate sensitivity to anyone questioning one’s sense of “personal truth.”
I would argue that there’s a sense in which any of us can claim, and most of us do claim, to be virtuous simply by living in accord with the things we think are good and proper. But the woke seem to think that certain ideas, including some very silly ideas, are themselves possessed of a sacred status, and that any attempt to challenge them is wrong, in the strict sense of moral right and wrong.
I should have take the time to expand on my comment earlier, to be more clear.
It’s one thing to think that one holds a virtuous position on a set of public policy issues. It’s another to think that anyone who voices a dissenting opinion is a fascist and should be punished. The latter viewpoint seems to be the “woke” viewpoint.
Glenn Loury and John McWhorter have talked about this on their podcasts. Glenn Loury has said that he has a problem with black people who won’t let you forget that they are black. They can’t just take time out and just relate to others on a human being to human being level.
Related to this is the belief that, “Your opinion on this topic doesn’t have much importance because you are not black, female, gay, transgender” and the only people who have opinions that really matter are people who can claim those labels. But if you introduce these people to blacks like Glenn Loury or John McWhorter or a homosexual like Dave Rubin or Douglas Murray or females like Bari Weiss or Abigail Shrier, the argument is that those people are not authentically black, authentically gay, authentically female.
Another big lie is that these operations are reversible.
They may be able to get you to look more or less the way you did before, but it won’t be “functional.”
From what I’ve read and heard, it’s “less” rather than “more.”
The other thing is that testosterone, if on it long enough, can render a female sterile. So some women who do decide to transition back to female find themselves with weird breasts and the inability to have children. And some states says children as young as 13 are “mature” enough to make these life-altering decisions, even without parental knowledge.
I highly recommend Abigail Shrier’s book. Even the sucessful trans people she interviewed have warnings about the process and the system . . .
Her book was censored right away – on Amazon and she has been attacked for her views. She just wrote about the people she interviewed and how it is affecting especially young girls. When confused young people show up at Planned Parenthood or these other doctors office about reassignment surgery, they are not counseled and she found many are troubled and come from homes with issues. They are getting into these lifestyles through massive networking on social media.
I also keep seeing books front and center on witchcraft and conjuring where you should not see them – like Michael’s and JoAnn Fabrics – craft stores that happen to sell books on crafts. With all the indoctrination found out through schools, after COVID forced home-schooling, parents are realizing more and more what is going on.