The Truth Fairy
I was going to give writing about gender woo-woo a bit of a break - but it’s hard to ignore. Some issues stick out more than others
I have to express my admiration for the guy in pink here, for having the balls to do this. Societal conventions be damned!
Now, don’t get me wrong. I hate discrimination and would like to minimize suffering. I wish I could wave my magic wand and make it all go away. But sticking my wand into a tight pink outfit, or red dress, probably isn’t the answer here.
I’d kind of like society to be based on some sort of scientific integrity, whilst simultaneously recognizing that science does not have all the answers - not by a long way.
If you have gender dysphoria, or feel like your body doesn’t match your inner conception of yourself, I have oodles of sympathy. I would like us to find ways of helping with that, and maybe we’ve found some partial answers already - but, honestly, I don’t really know what the answers are here - and the “right” answers are almost certainly going to be on a case-by-case basis anyway.
There must be ‘solutions’ we can come up with that respect the competing interests of everyone more fairly. Do we really need to lay waste to the concept of womanhood to treat trans women fairly, for example?
But the issue has exploded way beyond this question. Instead of a very real problem that affects a small percentage of people - a problem we ought to be able to address in fair, decent and humane ways - we’ve found ourselves in a surreal landscape that seems to bear little relation to reality. All thanks to modern-day gender crusaders.
It’s an instance of “give someone an inch and they’ll take a mile” - or, as more poetically expressed:
The gender woo-woo activists are currently doing one hell of an ice dance routine.
If you have a Twitter account it’s well-worth having a peek at the videos in Christopher Rufo’s thread, or you can read his article here.
Now it’s possibly true that the people participating in this “decolonizing gender” set of presentations just represent a very odd-ball fringe even for gender woo-woo specialists. However, it’s a good example of just how bonkers things can get if you allow a decoupling of your viewpoints from reality.
One person describes itself (himself? herself? thingself? WTFself? - who the frig knows?) as
used to identify as gender fluid
but has been
identifying more recently as a little bit more gaseous or plasma-like
Last night’s vindaloo decided to identify more as plasma-like. Unfortunately I had assumed it was still identifying as gaseous.
I’m sure this person feels very genuine about all these things - but I simply don’t know how to take this seriously. I identify as a “bit more gaseous”? Maybe as some kind of windbag?
Of course, all of this gets tied in to “white supremacy” etc. Apparently, us evil pasties invented the gender binary to oppress and colonize all of the other societies in the world who were happily walking around in their various gaseous states of identity until we came along.
But the damage we did was severe and we ought to pay for that, right? Of course, gender non-conforming people want their slice of the reparation cake too. Rufo writes
In the meantime, as an initial gesture of good faith, the panelists recommended that straight white Americans provide direct cash “reparations” to gender-nonconforming people. “If you have access to generational wealth, if you’re white and your parents have a savings account that is very much so connected to slavery and land theft, pay people,” said Mahkyra Gaines of the Gender Justice League. “Pay people directly. Give them the money so they can have the financial security in order to rest and to heal and to connect with their communities. . . . Pay that money to us now.”
Ganesha Gold Buffalo, a trans sex worker, explains that
My first introduction to colonialism looked a lot like me waking up at four in the morning, . . . every morning, to sounds of my ancestors screaming from outside my window, coming from the ground, coming from the earth. I followed those screams into the woods as a child . . . and was taught by my ancestors in those woods, in the forms of nature spirits, in the forms of elementals, in the forms of natural deities and old gods. While I was out there, I was taught many things and my mind was decolonized.
I’m glad that you were taught many things Ganesha - oh how I wish that some grasp on reality, however tenuous, would have been amongst them.
Mind you, it must be acknowledged that this kind of tale is substantively no different from claiming that some angel appeared to you and gave you the words of God.
We are prepared to believe all sorts of things when it comes to religion, so perhaps I shouldn’t be too dismissive of Ganesha here. Once again, the religious parallels within modern-day woke and gender woo-woo are evident.
Ganesha is a veritable gold-mine of quotes. Here she is again
I one-hundred percent want to still be able to look in the mirror and see every part of myself as a woman, see every part of myself as a two-spirit trans woman, a beautiful being: my moustache, all of my facial hair, my untrimmed brows, my fat ass, my belly, my big dick, everything
This reminds me of yet another horribly un-PC joke I heard in my teens
Q: What’s the difference between a middle-aged Italian woman and a walrus?
A: One is fat, wrinkly, ugly and has a moustache. The other is a walrus.
I’ve absolutely no idea why Italian women were singled out in this way - and the joke has little basis in actual fact, but it still appeals to my twisted sense of humour.
The thing that seems to characterize a lot of the current ‘woke’ trends is a desire for ‘reality’ to be different. I struggle with my weight, for example, but I don’t pretend I’m, somehow, mysteriously, beautiful. No, I’m an overweight, unhealthy, and unsightly mess - and definitely more on the walrus end of the spectrum. And it is my own fault. I know what to do to put it right, but am also a lazy dimwit. I don’t walk around trying to force everyone else to see me as ‘beautiful’ - to warp reality to make me feel more comfortable about myself.
Notice how Ganesha frames her conviction in terms of “I one-hundred percent want to”. This, I think, is very telling. Not only is so much of this gender woo-woo all about “me, me, me” it’s about a wish for reality to be different.
The Truth Fairy has visited us in the 21st century and taken away the molars of reality and left us only able to eat mush.
Autogynephilia: a form of sexual response in biological males characterized by sexual arousal over the idea of being or becoming a female.
That's what's going on in the pictures. Very, very few people suffer from true gender dysphoria. These chaps in the pictures most likely do not.
Will we fight for truth or reality? Or will we continue to tolerate assaults on both? From the looks of it, truth and reality had better get their affairs in order.
One correction. All evidence suggests that you are not, in fact, a lazy dimwit. While it makes a good joke for one who understands self-deprecation (apparently, too few), it seems tragically inaccurate insofar as it (wrongly) confirms something M(x?). Gaines alluded to in the reparations demand. In fact, if my suspicions are correct, you are in fact a hardworking person who has not prioritized your physical appearance.
Of course, we need to also respect that people on the other side of this debate are equally and likely more hardworking. In fact, they're downright EXHAUSTED from DOING THE WORK. Now, the work they do may be amorphous and difficult to define-- it is EMOTIONAL work, and everybody knows that is the workiest work of all-- but it is DRAINING. Is it so absurd to suggest that they get a little recompense for this labor, especially if it comes from those slavery profiteers Ma and Pops (paralegal and mechanic in my case-- the BASTARDS)?