I think as I’ve gotten older, my gender has changed. It must have.
When I was a younger man my taste in movies could be best summarized as :
Blow shit up. Blow more shit up. This movie is boring because not enough shit is blowing up.
Nowadays, whilst I still love the odd bit of murder and mayhem ably abetted by the odd block of C4, I have found I have a taste for more drama and, shock, horror, even some rom-coms.
The attraction of movies, and also their danger, is that they present a very unrealistic picture of life; they are fantasies.
The initial chemically-induced psychosis called love may convince you that it’s Richard Gere in his naval uniform coming to sweep you off your feet. The reality when the biochemistry dies down a bit is somewhat different
Love is that feeling you get in your guts when you see a girl across a crowded room and think, “Wow! One day I’m going to make you the unhappiest woman alive” (Jeff Green)
I love being married. It’s so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life (Rita Rudner)
I wonder how many marriages have floundered, at least in part, because of unrealistic expectations? Your fantasy is Julia Roberts in Notting Hill, but what you end up with is Kathy Bates in Misery. Or, as perfectly expressed in Roseanne
You may marry the man of your dreams, but fourteen years later, you’re married to a couch that burps
Reality has this way of overcoming our wildest fantasies.
Modern day gender ideology is based on a fraud; the poster on the theatre wall is for Notting Hill, but when you get inside and watch the movie, you find it’s Misery.
You may still enjoy the movie, but it sure ain’t Notting Hill.
It’s SHMOP time (the Sacred and Holy Month of Pride) again and the LGBTQIA2S+LMFAO ‘community’ are on the march. Other than being a colourful event, with the occasional descent into debauchery, I’ve no idea what it’s all about these days.
You’re gay? Oh how very, very, interesting. No really. It’s just so indescribably fascinating.
I’m not trying to single out gay people here, because if someone tried making their being straight out to be some thing of particular interest, I’d have the same reaction. But what is Pride about? Are there some LGB rights that still need to be won? Is homophobia still so rampant that we need a whole month to remind ourselves that gay (and bi) people exist and should not be discriminated against?
Hasn’t the battle been won when announcing that you’re gay is met with this kind of bored ‘so what’ reaction?
I remember some announcement a few months back where some US government position had been filled by a gay person. Can’t remember what it was now - possibly the Official Representative for Paperweight Design - but it was described as being an ‘historic’ first that a gay person had occupied this role. The other day, as the first straight man wearing a hat and walking down Acacia Avenue in Little Prickling whilst whistling the tune of I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts, I felt I was making history too.
So some people do feel the need, still, to point out sexuality as being history-making. These days the focus with Pride, however, at least the way it seems to me, is more on the other letters in the rainbow alphabet. These represent the more colourful section of the alphabet community.
The original sense and meaning of Pride is so outmoded these days.
If you’re one of those outmoded and old-fashioned lesbians who eschew and don’t chew dick, you’re definitely not an ‘acceptable’ member of the community - you will be excommunicated from the alphabet.
As we’ve all discovered, you can’t ‘win’ these gender arguments with logic. If logic was a feature when they first arose in academic circles they would have died an ignominious death, blown to smithereens by the C4 of logic.
They can only thrive in an environment where the very notion of the validity of logic is delegitimized, where your worldview is constructed from fantasy.
Bit like communism. Marx was a fucking moron who managed to convince a lot of other fucking morons that his fantasy was correct. It’s utter bilge that completely ignores the reality of human beings and how they think, feel and operate. The only way to make it happen is to force people into it - usually by murdering millions and millions of people (all for the greater ‘good’, one supposes).
It’s quite telling that most, if not all, of the current rash of sick ideologies that are plaguing the ‘west’ are just re-badged versions of Marxist analysis.
In perhaps the worst parallel of all time (at least visually), Marx is Julia Roberts in Notting Hill1. He’s a movie character peddling a fantasy. The reality is the sheer unrelenting misery of communism.
The good news, at least on the gender front, is that things are definitely changing. They’ve over-excited themselves and their once all-encompassing tumescence is rapidly dwindling. The people who don’t spend their lives on Twitter, or haven’t had the ‘pleasure’ of attending a DIE training session at work, might have been happy to wave the odd rainbow flag and watch a colourful spectacle, but they’re a bit less happy when blokes get put in women’s prisons and rape the inmates.
Even my mum, god love her, has noticed this lunacy.
The more they expose themselves (literally and figuratively) the more people will have second thoughts.
The notion that “anyone who identifies as a woman IS a woman” - a slogan much-beloved by the gender cultists - is nowhere near as accepted as the activists would like to make you think.
I’m cautiously optimistic about the future when it comes to this gender nonsense. We will (eventually) arrive at a situation more grounded in logic, reality and common sense, but only if we can avoid the dangers of the authoritarian loons in government and elsewhere who want to brand everything they don’t like as “hate speech” and either censor it or criminalize it, or both.
What I most fear is the backlash. I’ve noticed in myself a certain hardening (no, not that kind). As much as I want to be compassionate and understanding towards individuals who are suffering, I can’t compromise and accept a worldview based on fantasy. It’s important that things are grounded, as far as we possibly can, in reality.
The reality is that you can’t change sex. The reality is that there are only two sexes. The reality is that being a woman (or a man) is not a feeling.
Even the author of the infamous Scientific American article “Sex Redefined” which has been much-used to claim that scientists reject the sex binary rejects the notion that there are more than two sexes
But I’ve noticed these issues have the potential to get quite ugly, and potentially violent (real violence - not some hurty word kind of faux “violence”).
99% of the time my daughters’ aunt is one of the sweetest, kindest, loveliest people you could ever hope to meet. The other 1% of the time? Just get her talking about the self-ID issue and she’s quite, erm, vigorous in her disgust and despite.
At least my daughters get some balance. Their other aunt thinks that JK Rowling “is a bitch”.
If even aunt 1, who is otherwise headed for sainthood and would never advocate for violence, can be this vehement, what might be the reaction of other, less saintly, individuals who reject this gender ideology?
The extreme reactions, on both sides of the gender flap, are very concerning.
But this is what happens when you eschew logic and rational debate in favour of fantasy and feelings, when you call those who do want to engage at a rational level, bigots.
I think it’s going to get worse, for a time, because the gender loons are losing, and they know it. I hope I’m right that they’re losing. I hope I’m wrong about the backlash provoked on both sides.
I’m just a tyrant, standing before a peasant, asking him to follow me or die
When a trans activist bares his fake breasts on the White House lawn and then shames the White House for distancing themselves from his actions— “I was just living my truth!”— one has to feel that reality might just win after all. Because— according to the ideology of Pride— Montoya’s argument was completely reasonable. I can still walk into my library and see that their prominent “Pride” display has a huge banner over it: Live Your Truth! No irony. I might just ask if I can pin up a poster of Rose Montoya (topless) as a hero of this philosophy. The truth is, we don’t need to topple this Tower of Babel. It’s going to implode from within. (Too soon?)
So, this is all just Marxism to you? You cannot see any ties to liberal ideology? Such as: the perennial drive towards greater degrees of individual emancipation. The distrust of authority and contempt for hierarchy.
Maybe you should read Mill again. And find out what he says about Experiments in Living.