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Conservatives and Gender Nonsense Tolerance
The whole gender identity movement, the so-called “trans” thing, the idea that sex is not biologically determined, the idea that it’s really more complicated than two overlapping bell curves of masculine and feminine traits — all of that seems pretty absurd to me. It also seems important, in that it’s the first time we Americans have been told that we have to profess belief in something patently absurd or face censure in the workplace and society — and possible prosecution in New York City.
I comment on it more often than something as ridiculous as the “trans” movement would seem to deserve. I usually comment about it on Facebook, rather than here, because I assume most people here are broadly in agreement that the whole thing is silly.
I have about 875 “friends” on Facebook. Almost all of them chose to “friend” me because of my politics and cultural criticism, since that’s about all I post there. They’re a self-selected lot, overwhelmingly conservative, and I can count on them for a decent number of “shares” (re-postings) of what I write, and a reasonable number of “likes”: most posts will get 20 or 30 likes, and a popular post might get 80 or 100 likes, with a couple of dozen shares.
Earlier today I posted the following, after reading some ridiculous article about a “trans-man” complaining about the “pain of menstruation.”
Birds and Bees 101
As far as human reproduction goes, people come in two varieties: male, and female.
Healthy males produce sperm and are capable of fertilizing eggs. Only people born male are capable of doing this.
Healthy females produce eggs and are capable of becoming pregnant and giving birth. Only people born female are capable of doing this.
No one born male is capable of giving birth. No one born female is capable of fertilizing eggs.
People can choose to affect whatever kinds of sexual identities they like. Transvestites, people who like to dress like and pass themselves off as members of the opposite sex, have always been with us. This has nothing to do with their ability to fertilize eggs or give birth. In other words, it has nothing to do with their biological sex. It is matter of style and presentation, of how they choose to act.
So-called “trans-women” are not women, but rather male transvestites dressing as women. There’s nothing wrong with that, in my opinion. But it is a mistake to think that they are in any sense biologically female, simply because they dress and make themselves up, and sometimes modify their bodies, so as to appear female.
Similarly, so-called “trans-men” are not men, but rather female transvestites dressing as men. Again, there’s nothing wrong with that, in my opinion. But it would be a mistake to believe that these women are, in any sense, biologically male.
It shouldn’t be necessary to say this, but I keep reading about people who think “trans-man gives birth” is an extraordinary event. Women — and only women — have been giving birth for millennia, at the very least. While a woman giving birth is beautiful and wonderful, it’s nothing new.
I found the response — or lack of response — interesting. My Facebook posts about the trans movement get far fewer likes or shares than any other topic on which I post, other than the occasional obscure post about quantum computing or the like. I don’t know if the topic is just not interesting to most people, if my particular take on it is somehow off-putting, or if people have a reluctance to express an opinion about it. It doesn’t seem likely to me that hundreds of reliably conservative Facebook friends would shy away from the subject. On the other hand, I know that I’m far removed from popular culture, since I don’t watch television or listen to the radio or work in an office and mix with a lot of people. Maybe this stuff is more accepted than I want to believe.
I’d like to believe that most people simply find the topic boring or irrelevant, rather than think that people have grown to accept the nonsense and are reluctant to question it. Either way, I’ll keep commenting on it, because I think it matters. But it perplexes me just a little.
Published in Culture
I don’t “friend” people on Facebook unless they are family or known friends from the real world. The whole gender dysphoria/transgender thing is more evidence that we are entering a Weimar Germany phase in our history.
That which you posted is a succinct way of stating the issue. Throughout all of the recorded history I am aware of, this would all be so obvious that to have someone find it necessary to state it, however cogently, would be bewildering. It is an observation that is unassailable, in the context of observed, scientific reality.
There are a lot of problems we can identify, disagreements we may have with each other about the best way to get through this thing (life). We are a curious, imaginitive, creative species. We can constantly probe our surroundings, our relationships with each other, testing for problems, always trying to improve, adapt, survive.
When we have to resort to calling each other out on something this fundamental, we have run out of problems. Rejoice!
(However much I mean this, I don’t mean to be flip. When our precious government get involved in these matters, it’s time to go to the mattresses.)
I believe people did not like and share because they are afraid of the trans-supporting mob that’s out there. The one that drove a British man to commit suicide after his group protested drag queens reading to little children at the public library.
Bell curves are one-dimensional. Human traits are very complicated with hundreds of dimensions of various modal distributions. Because of this, there is the idea that every person is their own unique “gender”. What is the point of that? The word “gender” has just been re-defined to match “personality” and we need to use proper nouns instead of pronouns.
I’m not sure if you’re being entirely serious or intending to parody what is increasingly the popular (mis)conception about human sexuality. I’m going to go with the latter, because eliminating pronouns is unnecessary and silly, and you seem like a sensible guy.
There is a constellation of personality traits that distribute by sex in a characteristic fashion, creating what are essentially two overlapping, normal distributions. For any one of those traits, we can make statistical predictions based on the sex of an individual; for these sex-linked traits, those predictions will tend, more often than not, to be correct.
Those traits which are conspicuously emphasized in the male population we can label “masculine,” those prominent in the female population, “feminine.”
We can make up individual labels for different combinations of these traits, but that doesn’t change the fact that the traits themselves tend to partition statistically based on sex. There are women who express more masculine traits than the typical woman; even some who express more masculine traits than the typical man. The opposite is also true.
If we want to create labels for effeminate men or masculine women, I guess we can do that. I don’t see the point, as we’re pretty good at recognizing what we see and there seems little utility in labeling it. Either eschewing or inventing pronouns on that basis is just nuts.
I have to deal with this every day at work. The admin in our area is a male who has deemed himself female. He changed his name to a rather weird totally-made-up name, dresses in female clothes, wears women’s platform shoes, etc. However, it looks to me like this is not working. No matter how hard he tries, he cannot grow what hair he has, past his ears. I think he looks absolutely ridiculous, trying to be a female and simply not succeeding. Everyone else in the company totally goes along with this charade, except me. I just try to stay away from him (her?), and do not refer to him (her?) if I can avoid it. I just keep my distance and my silence.
People are fragile. I’m casually dismissive of all the college kids who play at being gender-nonconforming. I think they’re silly kids playing games and self-indulgently breaking rules. More mature people going through this, I’m not sure. I think they’re just disturbed.
I’d be tempted to talk politely with someone like your admin, and to ask what he was thinking, to try to understand it. But I understand that that’s problematic in the modern workplace.
I suspect your Facebook followers were either distracted by events or else are fearful of the pink jackboots.
Exactly. Millions of people are now in a habit of latching onto whatever absurd complaint passes into fashion. They are in a habit of hating and/or threatening anyone who objects. And their opponents are in a habit of bitter but fearful silence.
The foundation has been laid for totalitarian government. Nothing, not even nature and “the facts of life”, are beyond authoritative decrees. And one of our only two political parties is now in a habit of declaring rival Presidents illegitimate imposters, alongside regular demonizations of anything traditional or sane. Without a cultural awakening, the West is headed for a period every bit as dark and brutal as the horrors our grandparents witnessed. When the symbol of God’s mercy — the rainbow — is refashioned to celebrate lies, it is a sign that evil has overtaken popular culture.
We are social animals. It’s difficult to believe you are right when everybody (open about their beliefs) is wrong. Good people will be tempted to go along to get along. One can’t overstate the importance of frankly speaking truth in public. This is a hill to die on.
Though it seems like such a ridiculous issue, I think you’re absolutely right. This is important.
Yes, it is about insisting that reality exists. Otherwise we become subject to the Ministry of Truth.
Right.
I think a lot of people don’t appreciate how different this is from past progressive efforts, with its insistence that we essentially confess a belief. Your metaphor is apt: it does have a totalitarian quality about it.
For your further reading: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2015/06/15145/?fbclid=IwAR3oebUkdJPNpWLF0KBvezzBclS0WgyV3HbqwbpOk1Lze3iWUMX0rCcoSf8
Who knows if this will be the case in 10 (or whatever) years?
Advancements in science seem to be slowly nudging Americans toward the pro-life side of the abortion issue. While it’s not the same thing, if we get to the point where medical procedures allow men to give birth and women to fertilize eggs, perhaps we’ll see a similar shift toward accepting the new paradigm on gender.
I’ve read some who say this is all a fad, and reality will pull people back in time. Others say this is a brave new world and we will have to accept it. I slightly suspect the latter is the case, but have no real clue. It will be interesting.
Indeed.
But it’s the case today.
This is the issue most basic to Liberty. Being told what not to think is the most constricting possible limit to personal freedom. Make no mistake, we are being told what not to think not just what not to say. To stand against it is essential for future Liberty. There is a price to pay, freedom is never free nor permanent.
Check with your facebook friends to see if they actually saw the post. I wonder if Thought Crime gets automatically suppressed….
At my federal institution of employment I have been getting an email “Ping” several time a month asking me to “anonymously” fill out an online LGBQRTY+ survey to take a pulse of the “atmosphere” surrounding “our” acceptance of fellow workers. I have been studiously avoiding this request and the more recent requests want to know why I have not responded to the survey emails.
Anonymous on line survey? Pushaw
Yes this is just like making sure the government does not have a gun registry because it only for “information”……. Till later.
As a department manager at a large (and therefore Progressive) company, I feared the possibility that such a person would show up and insist on using the women’s restroom on the building floor. The [actual] women in the department would have been outraged at the idea of having to share a restroom with a man pretending to be a woman, and I feared that I would have been expected to somehow mediate the situation. Our 30 story building had no single-stall restrooms.
But maleness or femaleness is embedded in literally every cell of a person’s body as carried by DNA, regardless of how much we may alter the external appearances of the body, or even some of the large system internal plumbing.
To me, the so-called “trans-men/women” are mentally ill. The idea that everyone must go along with their delusions, and in fact support mutilating their bodies, is insane. It’s akin to finding a man who believes he’s Jesus Christ and providing him with disciples, helping him to wander around a desert, and then actually crucifying him.
We don’t crucify the man who thinks he’s Christ or otherwise indulge his delusion; we try to treat whatever mental illness makes him think that. We should do the same with “trans” people.
As for what we each can do, Solzhenitsyn guides us:
Live not by lies!
The idea that thoughts are the whole of personal identity and the body is just a fleeting slave of the mind is an idea thousands of years old, not a modern revelation. This confusion is regress, not progress. Modern science has verified the constant interaction of mind and body.
If you dismiss physical identity as a mere reflection of mental desire, then the physical form needn’t even be human. We have only begun to witness the self-mutilations, the public fantasies, and the beastial pleasures that follow this errant philosophy… though it has already resulted in the killing of children too young to exhibit independent thought (babies in the womb).
This is downstream of feminism, secular humanism, and other trends centuries in the making. Essentially, it is a rejection of inheritance and roles; a desire for radical self-creation. It is little different than when God’s highest angel became the lowest because Lucifer refused to serve lesser beings. It’s pride, just as the LGBTQ fools claim.
I’d go with this explaination. It is pretty self evident that the trans movement isn’t worth losing your job/family/life over. It is hoped, this madness will burn out like a virus.
Trans activists are pre empting dissent.
Henry, I understand your position, but I don’t think that it’s conservative. I think that it is libertarian.
Why would you find cross-dressing perfectly permissible? Well, because you’re a libertarian, at least on this issue. There’s a problem with this. If your rule is that people can dress however they want, how are you going to stop them from wearing no clothes at all in public?
This is a serious question. I’ve read of silly political controversies (in SF, I think) because libertarians and Leftists are simply incapable of coming up with a justification for prohibiting public nudity. The best that they could come up with is a health argument, based on the idea that when a nude person sits on a public bench . . . um, how to put this? . . . there may be a transfer of fecal material from the bench-sitter’s nether regions onto the bench, which actually is a public health concern.
The simple rule is that one should dress appropriately. It shows respect for yourself and respect for others. There are rare exceptions, like the silly exhibitionism at college football games.
I think that everybody knows this. I think that people who do otherwise are playing an obnoxious, juvenile game.
Oh, don’t do that. I was a libertarian, once upon a time. But I got over it.
I’m aware of no American tradition of regulating attire, beyond basic decency standards. If I remember right, you’re a lawyer, and so you may know better than I about that, and I’ll accede to your greater knowledge if you’re aware of significant examples. But if I’m right and simple modesty — covering the necessary bits of male and female anatomy — is the only standard we’ve ever enforced, then I’ll claim that, yes, it is conservative to maintain that standard.
And finally, my interest is always to persuade. Arguments against compelling people to profess belief in what they consider to be a fiction — for example, that “trans-women” are in fact women — are fairly easy to make from first principles. Similar compelling arguments for forcing men and women to comply with conventional expressions of masculinity and femininity are much more difficult to make.
So, while you and I probably agree about the larger absurdity of the trans movement, we’ll differ about the individual’s freedom to dress as he or she pleases. I think our traditions are pretty clear in that regard.
Maybe but it is done, your side lost. Conform or be punished.
Reality is what those with the power / guns say it is. That side is willing to do violence over this issue. The other side just wants peace and will thus conform.
Yeah, and Kavanaugh will never make it to the Supreme Court.
Sorry, I’m not ready to declare defeat just yet, my faux androgynous friend. And, honestly, I think you’re mistaken (again).
Short term I am right. Long term your point will win. The Gods of the CopyBook Headings will eventually return and the Gods of the Market Place will flee.
I’m not sure what all that means, but it seems to me that you can’t win in the long term unless you eventually win in the short term.
Anyway, I think we are nearing an inflection point. On multiple fronts, I think conservativism is beginning to surge. I am an optimist and I may be projecting more of my own hopes into this than I should, but it does seem to me that normal people are increasingly impatient with the nonsense.
Kipling poem. @fakejohnjanegalt is referring to: