You may have herd of the story of the man who identified as a deer being shot by hunters. It is, of course, bucking nonsense. I would say it’s satyrical but, technically speaking, satyrs have the legs of a goat.
More amusingly, Reuters felt it was necessary to do a “fact check” on this story. But one should not be too staggered by this - it is, after all, a characteristic of the 21st century that parody and reality are more difficult to distinguish these days.
Real deer are quite interesting. The males strut their stuff and go all hyper-masculine and butt their heads together as the female deer watch, erm, fawningly, for their opportunity to be impaled by the winner.
At least that’s the ‘standard’ story promoted as a good example of sexual selection in nature. Life is more complicated, though, and some female deer make feminists proud by skulking off with a somewhat less than alpha male and finding a suitable bush to copulate behind.
The great evolutionary biologist, John Maynard Smith, called these examples of deerhood sneaky fuckers.
Maynard Smith spent a good deal of time trying to figure out why sex had evolved at all. Various theories have been proposed, but the puzzle of why this method of passing on one’s genes occurred at all is still not properly solved (at least according to Wiki)
Currently the adaptive advantage of sexual reproduction is widely regarded as a major unsolved problem in biology
We may not properly understand why evolution ‘picked’ this method, but we can’t really deny that it has, at least as far as the construction of human societies is concerned, been a somewhat important driver.
Sex is a topic that has exercised humanity (in more ways than one) for millennia. I recall one Muslim cleric opining that the increased licentiousness of women (it’s always the women, isn’t it?) had lead to an increase in the severity and frequency of earthquakes.
Quite apart from bringing an entirely new meaning to the phrase “did the earth move for you, darling?” it would, if true, accord women a quite extraordinary degree of power. Women, it seems, don’t need to invade places - they just need to have more sex and the walls will come tumbling down. Joshua’s trumpet is nowhere near as effective as Joshua’s strumpet.
Sex, I would argue, has been the primary driving force that has shaped animal societies and behaviours. It might not be too much of an exaggeration to say that everything is shaped around the biological necessity of copulation.
How this has played out in species as complex as humans is, itself, complex. Sex structures societies and societies structure sex in a complex dynamic feedback that will lead to the emergence of a variety of societal systems, behaviours and attitudes. Whilst there may be some broad commonalities we should not expect the society of, say, the Aztecs to have responded in quite the same way as, say, the Zhou dynasty in China when it came to the biological necessity of ensuring that babies are born.
Sex, and our understanding of it, are important. It’s kind of fundamental - a foundational thing that is, really, our raison d'être (at least at a species level).
How, then, are we to explain the recent surge in ‘trans’ without reference to the specific society in which it has emerged? Is transgenderism something that transcends the notion of social construction?
Take a hypothetical ‘gender’ non-conforming boy in today’s ‘western’ society where this lad may well grow up thinking that they actually ARE female. If the same boy had grown up in an entirely different culture would he still believe that he IS a ‘she’?
Is the very notion that there is some ‘internal reality’ to one’s gender a social construct?
The approach of the gender activists is to claim that trans people have always been with us. But is this true? And to what extent is it true?
They will point to other cultures where very gender non-conforming people have been accepted (typically these are gender non-conforming males who are ultra ‘feminine’ according to that particular culture’s view of what constitutes femininity). They are right in this - certain cultures (but by no means all) have accepted and, to greater or lesser extents, celebrated these small minority of ‘different’ individuals.
Were these men (typically men) ever actually viewed as being women, though? Not just in behaviour or dress, but as actual women? Did the members of these groups ever actually view themselves as women?
Did these cultures have the same understanding of ‘trans’ as the one espoused by today’s gender activists?
I don’t think so. I think (and I may be wrong) these ‘different’ people were viewed as a separate category - and accepted on that basis.
And I’m not aware of any cultures who had ‘sub-cultures’ of women who behaved as men. Given the complexity and variety of human societies it wouldn’t surprise me if such sub-cultures existed in the same way that, for example, the (alleged) ‘two-spirit’ sub-culture of Native Americans existed or the kathoey sub-culture of Thailand exists. According to some Buddhist thought in Thailand, the kathoeys were women in a past life who have been born as men in this life in order to atone for some transgression in their previous life.
One question here is whether the gender activists of today are guilty of ‘colonising’ the understanding and attitudes of different cultures and suffusing them with their modern ‘understanding’. Is it appropriate appropriation?
The more important question is how much the notion of ‘trans’ is affected by the stereotypes and attitudes towards ‘gender’ of the society in which it occurs? How do we disentangle all of this? Or, like today’s gender activists might argue, is it a natural phenomenon that lies outside and unaffected by the ‘constructions’ of the society in which it exists?
Is it more a case of transtrenderism than transgenderism?
Ten years ago...or even five...this discussion wouldn't have existed, because the concepts involved just didn't exist in the minds of normal humans. And yet, here we are. Sadly.
Something that bothers me is this idea of people who claim to have been born in the "wrong" body and want to be the other sex, asuming that is the solution to all their ills.. But but but...if one is born in a male body it may feel wrong, but how could you know that a female body is, in fact, the right body? You've never been female, so that's a wild leap of faith at best. You might, via magic, be converted into a female body and then realise well, fuck me dead, I was wrong I'm not a woman I'm actually a reindeer, or a hedgehog, or something equally stupid.
Overall, I think think that engaging with this trans bullshit at any intellectual level is a complete waste of time because its all silly nonsense propagated by intellectually insubstantual imbeciles. It should be met at all times and places with mockery. Either furious mockery, or amused mockery, it doesn't matter, but mockery nonetheless.
To add some context, I spent my professional career as a defence radar engineer. I'm a serious man. I built huge machines that were designed to assist in killing my nations enemies, without also simultaneously killing friendly people through inadvertent exposure to radiation. It was a very very serious endeavour. All my adult life, I have engaged in extremely consequential, no-shit life and death, national security work. And now, in retirement, , I find myself surrounded by trivial, foolish, deluded men who think they are women. I have better things to do with my time than engage with these cretins. I have golf to play, FFS! I could cry with frustration.
This is firstly a leftist mental illness. Secondly it’s being promoted by destructive forces to pervert and poison normal gender roles in order to undermine family life. It’s mental illness being promoted instead of being treated. Or what we professionals call a bunch of nonces.