Is That an Ideology in Your Pocket, or are You Just Pleased to See Me?

Remember covid? I’m sure you do. Remember what they told us? Remember how they ‘sold’ it to us? Remember the words deadly and unprecedented?

It was, of course, a myth. Even at the very beginning of this engineered panic the evidence that we had at the time pointed to something very much at the level of ‘serious flu’ in terms of consequence¹.

An ideology, based on no evidence, was created (and imposed) and the world suffered the (very) serious consequences - consequences far more deadly than the disease itself.

Without the imposition of this overarching ideology of severity all of the various sub-myths could never have been given life. We had the sub-myths of asymptomatic transmission, social distancing, masking, fomite (surface) transmission, lockdown, business and school closures, track and tracing, vaccine passports, PCR testing, plastic screens, and so on.

It was a time of sheer lunacy that seems, 5 years on, to belong to some kind of weird and unwelcome dream. Yet it all happened.

This myth, this ideology, of severity was the crucial pivot on which all else hinged.

Once The Big Lie™ had been promoted and established all of the other smaller lies could be easily propagated. One could say that during this time lying became more contagious than covid itself.

Where else, today, do we see such a ‘pivot point’? Where else do we see an entire ideology that is utterly dependent on a single, unsubstantiated, critical point?

There are probably several such examples, but for sheer lunacy none really compare to the whole trans thing.

Just as it was (and is) important to take a step back with covid and focus on the ‘big picture’, this is also true of ‘trans’. It’s important to remind ourselves of this and not to get too bogged down with all the details (as interesting and important as they can be).

Trans-Substantiation?

What is the pivot point for ‘trans’ that requires substantiation? What is the foundation upon which the whole rainbow palace is built?

As she so often does on this issue JK Rowling expresses it perfectly and gets straight to the point.

I’ve included the response from Dominic because I want to come back to that later.

We’re all used to the question “what is a woman?” and the inability of the pro-trans lobby to effectively answer this in any logically consistent way.

But another question we could ask, and it’s every bit as important, is . . .

“what is trans?”

It’s really this question, this pivot point, upon which everything hinges.

Now, I’m not saying anything new here. Lord knows, at this stage of this grisly game there is almost certainly nothing new to be said. But I do think it’s worth focusing on this fault line.

What is ‘trans’?

The progressive position would have you believe that it’s some innate inner state of being that is entirely natural. This has variously been expressed in terms of people having something akin to a gendered ‘soul’, or being born in ‘the wrong body’, and you’ll hear people talk about the concept of “an authentic self”.

A very common perspective on the non-progressive side of the coin is that ‘trans’ is merely a specific example of a delusion, in the same way that believing oneself to be Napoleon would be a specific example of something in the category of delusion.

But which of these is correct? Or perhaps we should ask which of these represents an understanding that is closer to the truth?

Consider the following two statements

1. My daughter IS trans

2. My daughter believes she’s the opposite sex

Two very different framings of exactly the same situation. Two very different meanings. Two very different consequences for how things are dealt with.

A parallel is often drawn with the fight for gay rights. Back in the day it was thought that homosexuality was some kind of perversion, a kind of sexual deviancy that was often viewed as a kind of mental illness. The argument for gay rights was won largely because it became accepted that this wasn’t the case and that someone’s sexual orientation was mostly innate².

Trans, in the progressive view, is said to be similarly ‘innate’.

There’s a very big difference, though.

Regrettably, because of this previous view of homosexuality, various kinds of ‘conversion therapy’ to ‘cure’ someone of this condition³ were attempted, some of which were pretty brutal. They didn’t work.

The thing with ‘trans’, though, is that ‘conversion therapy’ does work⁴. There’s one really good form of ‘conversion therapy’, for young people, that works in well over 80% of cases . . .

We call it puberty

The reason, I think, that progressives seem to be very, very against any kind of therapies to address sex confusion that aren’t immediately ‘affirming’, none of which are in any way inhumane, is that this will ultimately undermine their position; these therapies will often work.

The fact that these therapies (or even puberty) work to resolve sex confusion is a serious threat to the claim of ‘innateness’.

They really don’t want to know the potential success rate of such therapies, do they?

The language itself is all a bit absurd isn’t it? Gender ‘affirming’ care can itself be viewed as a kind of conversion therapy; the attempt to convert a man into a woman and vice versa. The whole notion of what is being ‘converted’ into what critically depends on which side of the trans fault line you sit.

If you believe trans is some innate property, that one’s ‘authentic’ self can differ from one’s biology, then any attempt to persuade someone⁵ away from this ‘authentic self’ will be viewed as a conversion therapy to, presumably, an inauthentic self.

If you believe trans is simply one of a myriad number of possible delusions that people can get all tangled in, then the ‘conversion’ here is from someone who is mentally unwell to someone who is mentally healthy.

Gay vs Trans

There’s another difference to be considered here, also. Let’s go back to the 2 statements above and write them in following way

1. My son IS gay

2. My son believes he is attracted (only) to other men

The 2nd statement here doesn’t really work does it? I mean, being a bit crude about it, if you’ve got a raging stiffy at the sight of a naked man then it’s fair to say you are attracted to other men. Where’s the ‘belief’ here?

If you want to get a bit more scientific about it, then states of arousal can be measured by various unconscious bodily responses. Gay men will exhibit different (sexual) responses to different images. What would be the equivalent for the trans condition? There is none.

Being gay is defined by your (sexual) attraction to a person who is the same sex as you.

Now, you could argue that this attraction is caused by upbringing or some mental illness, or you could say it’s natural and innate. For the purposes of being gay (or not), however, the reasons for this attraction are irrelevant. You are either attracted to people of the same sex, or you are not. If you are attracted then you’re gay (or perhaps bi) and that’s that.

With trans the only ‘measurement’ that can be done is to ask what an individual feels. An individual could feel like they ought to be a member of the opposite sex. They could feel they want to be a member of the opposite sex. They could even feel that they are a member of the opposite sex, despite not having the biology consistent with that feeling.

But these are quite different to the claim that one is a member of the opposite sex.

You can immediately see why there’s so much focus on ‘gender’ categories rather than sex categories, because when you phrase things in terms of sex as I have done above, then it lays everything out in very clear terms.

As soon as you focus on sex as a category, rather than gender, it’s very clear that trans is a kind of delusion - a state of desire or perception that is inconsistent with reality.

The statement “Trans women are women” is never true when the word woman is understood in terms of a sex category.

And herein lies the whole issue. The state of being gay and the state of being a member of a biological sex class⁶ are not imprecise. They are precisely defined (and measurable) things.

Trans only ‘works’ if we assert the primacy of gender over sex. But how can gender possibly be said to be ‘innate’?

The Trans Conundrum

One reason⁷ I’ve focused on trying to understand what ‘gender’ is in a fair bit of my previous writings is because it’s absolutely central to the whole trans thing. Trans, as an ‘innate’ property, only ‘works’ if we disregard sex categories and focus, instead, on gender categories.

The problem here is that gender is not some fixed objective thing. It heavily relies on the social conditioning pertinent to a specific society. This is about as far from ‘innate’ as one could imagine.

The trans claim would be that there is an ‘innate’ sense about which version of a non-innate thing (gender) you are.

Take, for example, the statement that someone “behaves like a woman”. What is meant by this is that someone exhibits the stereotypical behaviours associated with the sex class of ‘woman’. But, as Helen Joyce points out, anything that a woman does IS behaving ‘like a woman’. By definition.

And gender (male or female) can only be defined contingent upon sex classes anyway. Gender is the basket of roles, expectations and behaviours typically associated with a particular sex class.

Gender, then, only ‘works’ as a concept if we focus on ‘averages’ and consider stereotypes. But if we allow gender to take primacy over sex, as a category, then what’s the point of the sex category at all (except to, erm, ‘define’ gender)?

Indeed, if humans really did find themselves attracted to gender, what would it mean to be gay, or straight for that matter? I guess I’ve never heard a guy say something like “Wow. Will you look at the gender on that!”

A man might be attracted to a very feminine behaving woman, or to a woman who behaves in ways more typically associated with males. What ‘gender’ are they attracted to here?

As soon as you enter the world of gender, the questions and inconsistencies just keep piling up, and don’t stop. This, I believe, is a feature and not a bug. The whole edifice of GenderWoo™ only ‘works’ by keeping everything vague, inconsistent, and arbitrary.

Not so when we focus on sex categories. Everything becomes so much clearer, more precise, and unambiguous.

Why Do You Care?

One of the most frequent comments from the progressive lobby, and we can see it in Dominic’s reply to JK Rowling above, is the question of why we care. The implication is almost always along the lines that only people who ‘hate’ trans people could possibly care this much. Normal, moral, people would see that trans affects only a minority of the population and would be OK with people living their own lives as they see fit. Surely?

Yes. And also No.

At a personal, individual, level most of us don’t really have a problem. You do you, as they say. And this is fine for most everyday interactions. It becomes more of an issue when this impacts on spaces and rights (or privileges) reserved solely for women as a sex class.

But it’s completely disingenuous to suggest that this is all about things at an individual level, when it so very clearly isn’t. I mean, for eff’s sake, laws have been and are being re-written to assert the primacy of gender categories over sex. How on earth can one argue, whether you’re for or against, that this is something that doesn’t impact every one of us?

And that’s just one example.

Here’s another

Quite apart from the glaring inconsistency of claiming unimportance (another ‘argument’ that’s frequently asserted - trans is such an insignificant issue so why are you spending so much effort arguing against it?) whilst simultaneously considering it so important by promoting it everywhere and having an entire nationwide month of celebration, this stuff is clearly having an outsized impact.

It’s had a significant impact on our ability to speak freely. Here in the UK the police wanted to ‘investigate’ as a potential ‘hate’ crime someone who had put up stickers stating the truth that one cannot change sex.

It’s entirely equivalent to investigating someone for a ‘hate’ crime who had put up stickers saying that “water is wet”.

It matters not whether anyone was prosecuted - that’s not the point of these exercises. It’s to get people to self-censor and not to cross the official line.

There are so many reasons to care - and none of them have anything to do with (most) interactions at a personal level. They’re all things that are re-shaping our societies. These reasons include things like women’s safety, women’s privacy and dignity, education, health resources, free speech, women’s sports, our legal frameworks.

Whether you agree with the progressive agenda or not, it’s ridiculous to claim this issue has no importance at a political, or societal, level.

You’re All Just Hate Monsters

It’s important to focus on this fault line, this un-evidenced and unsubstantiated claim that trans is a state of being rather than a delusion, because it’s this upon which accusations of ‘hate’ are based.

Once again we run straight into an inconsistency. If you claim to really ‘care’ about the plight of trans people then, surely, isn’t in the best interests of trans people themselves to understand the origin of trans and whether it’s some genuine innate state of being or more accurately described as a delusion?

Drawing your ideological line in the sand here, and getting it wrong, is going to result in the wrong course of help (or treatment). How does getting this wrong actually help trans people?

But if you view trans as belonging more to the delusion category you will be described as hateful - simply for rejecting the idea that there is any legitimacy at all to concepts such as “born in the wrong body”.

Such is the state of ‘debate’ today and not only on this trans/gender issue. If one rejects the notion of systemic racism as a significant oppression, or rejects the notion of rape culture or toxic masculinity, or rejects the whole framework of ‘privileges’, or argues for the superiority of one culture over another, or rejects the idea that anyone should be simply able to walk into your country and be welcomed as a resident, or rejects the ideology of Islam, or any one of a myriad of other things we might question or reject, then one is not merely mistaken, but hateful - according to the ‘progressive’ faction.

You can still read plenty of articles still making the claim that the only reason Trump won was because a significant fraction of the US population are hateful and support hate.

It’s as if they believe there could be no rational objection to their viewpoints, and the only reason anyone could disagree with those beliefs is because of hate.

Some, perhaps most, will genuinely believe this. But it’s as well to consider that it has also been a remarkably effective strategy to silence debate and prevent any proper critical examination of the issues of substance involved.

Instead of focusing on the ideological pivot point at hand it might be a more effective strategy to ask for an explanation of why any particular view is considered to be hateful. Why, exactly, is it hateful to reject the notion that trans is an innate state of being?

It might be accurate for me to say that I hate the ideology of Communism. I think it’s barking mad and a fool’s errand. Does this mean I hate Communists, the people who do think it makes sense? Of course not - that would be ridiculous.

When judging ideologies I suppose a good rule of thumb might be along the lines of some dude’s advice a while back

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits.”

What are the ‘fruits’ of trans ideology?

Women fearful for their safety. Women losing out on sporting achievements. Men who claim to be women representing women in various official capacities. Healthy bodies mutilated. A lifetime dependency on powerful (and expensive) drugs. Families torn apart.

For what?

It’s not even very clear that ‘gender affirming’ ideology results in happier ‘trans’ people. The evidence for that is somewhat scant.

I’ve asked this question before but I think it’s an important hypothetical to ask someone who’s supportive of the trans narrative.

If a new talking therapy were discovered tomorrow that would mean trans people lived happy lives as their original biological sex and gender would you be in favour of it? If not, why not?

If they’re against it you know that it’s just an ideology in their pocket.

1. We can still view this as a disease event that needed some response because it was going to be serious for some. Just as flu is. But it was never something we needed to stop the world for, or to indulge in the mandated performative pantomime that we did. Trillions were spent, worldwide, on this mandated performative nonsense; none of which worked. It was all an illusion of (disease) control based on a fantasy

2. Douglas Murray, himself a gay man, does question this position a bit and feels, if I’ve understood him correctly, that there may also be some component of social conditioning in some cases (or whatever you want to call it). He does talk about this a bit, and the reasons (and evidence) for his view, in his book The Madness of Crowds

3. And before someone gets a bit bristly at my use of the word ‘condition’ here, I would also use the same terminology for the condition of being straight. No value judgment, or negative connotation, is at all implied

4. I should probably say it can work here. I doubt whether there are good statistics currently available for the percentage success rate, because many (most?) therapists these days are prevented from doing anything except full-on affirmation

5. More accurately a therapist would be exploring all of the possible factors that may have contributed to the feeling of ‘being’ trans and helping the patient to properly understand them and come to terms with them. It’s only the progressive lobby who would conclude this is an attempt at ‘conversion’. If someone presents with symptoms of depression, for example, it is the therapist’s job to try to unravel all of the factors that might have contributed and to help their patient cope better with them. Only a complete eejit would argue that the therapist is trying to convert someone away from their ‘authentic self’ in this case

6. With the possible exception of the very, very tiny percentage of people who have some biological anomaly/disorder that results in a degree of ambiguity about their sex class. These people, however, do not represent a different sex class (of which there are only two), but rather a kind of ‘muddling’ of the two classes

7. There are plenty of other reasons to focus on the concept of ‘gender’. For example, what kind of worldview is being presented as ‘fact’ to our kids in schools? And, yes, it’s something that concerns me - not least because I hope my granddaughter isn’t subjected to these kinds of ideologies when she is old enough for school