But I want to, he said
Oh oh oh says the man, running is so important to me.
“Running is so – such a crucial part of my like my being” he says – not pausing for a single second, of course, to remember that the same is true of the women he runs “with” and that therefore he should stop competing with them.
They never do. They never ever do. They tell us self-pityingly how much the cycling football running swimming rugby yadda yadda means to them and never ever ever stop to think about anyone other than their precious selves.
It’s just a problem of biological classification. These bastards should be lumped in with fleas, ticks and other parasites. Then, fast as you like, in the manner of a cockroach on the back of a greyhound..
They’re far, far too precious to think about anyone else. Yet again, it’s that framing device known as intersectionality. They don’t have to think about anyone else, and no one else is allowed to think of his or her own interests, because the mostest vulnerablest oppressedest minority evAr is the poor, victimized trans communinny.
(Reminds me of an old video from The Onion on protecting the precious gays by keeping them out of the military.)
But “intersectionality” doesn’t explain it. I understand your point, but the mystery remains. I don’t suppose I’ll ever get it. Why this? Why are otherwise non-insane people so convinced by this “most vulnerable” nonsense? How do they look at big hulking smirking men and see…I don’t know…Bambi and Bambi’s mother and the little girl in the red coat in Schindler’s List and a lost puppy and a lost kitten and a lost baby rabbit and a lost baby elephant? What do they see that I don’t see???
So? Run with the men if it’s so integral to your “being.” Run alone. If it’s so meaningful to you, you will run anyway.
I suppose every generation must have its signature madness. It’s unfortunate that this one didn’t choose something trivial like flares, or at least something self-limiting like the satanic panic. I suspect these madnesses are just what happens when people are not paying attention and people are very good at not paying attention.
Run with the bulls, run with ink, run with your friends, run with your enemies, run up and down and back and forth, run however you like except in competition with people who are disadvantaged compared to you.
I … I just pictured a nightmarish amalgam of all those things, stitched together using some eldritch technomancy stolen from the Elder Gods, each head fully sentient and gibbering, bleating incoherently as they loll loosely about the slow, hulking central body.
Ew.
But I can’t see what believers see, either. All’s I can do is try to look at it like an anthropologist studying the artifacts of an extinct culture. From that perspective, devices like intersectionality and camouflage-against-the-herd have a lot of explanatory power, as do principles like doublethink and the problem of epistemic closure. They don’t tell the whole story, of course, because this kind of insanity isn’t that simple.
When you rudely bring up these alternatives that are available to him, alternatives which he declines to choose, it becomes clear that it’s not about the running. Remove the “running” bit, you’re left with the “women” bit. It’s about winning against women, crossing women’s boundaries, and being “validated” as a “woman” by being among women. At this point, it’s no longer a sporting or fitness activity, it’s a fetish.
I don’t get it either, but a one-size-fits-all explanation might be both illusory and Quixotic.
Just as the forced teaming of the infinitely elastic “trans umbrella” aspires to a lot of disparate and contradictory sub and micro-demographics within the “community”, I believe that trans activism, like any other religion, attracts adherents who have a wide range of incommensurate motivations, both genuine and opportunistic, pious and profane, many a combination of several. You’ve got the True Believers who’ve swallowed the whole lot, hook, line, and sinker. You’ve got the Gravy Train riders. There are the earnest but incurious ones who don’t look too closely at the details, who feel badly about having missed out on the Gay Rights Movement, and hate the idea of missing out on being on the Right Side of History. There are the bandwagon types who’ve latched onto the flavour of the month. I’m sure that tribalism brings a healthy tranche of followers, all eager to fight Fascism, be Good Progressives, whatever. You’ve got the MRA types who are thrilled at having a perfectly legitimate outlet for their misogyny, which they can deploy openly in righteous “defence” of the most marginalized of the marginalized. Whether all of these people actually believe in all the bullshit is an open question, but for whatever eason, many of them think it’s to their advantage to do so, and be seen to do so.
I would imagine that this is easier to sign on to if there’s little or nothing at stake for you personally or professionally. In some situations, as we’ve seen, there’s a cost to to not toeing the trans line. The adherents I’m most puzzled by are women. How many of them are part of the “Do it to Julia” brigade it’s hard to say, but it’s angering and heartbreaking to see how many women will turn away from the evidence of ongoing abuse taking place in women’s prison’s, hospital wards, rape shelters, courtrooms, police stations, schools, locker rooms, toilet facilities, sports teams….all because men pretending to be women have been given permission and power to invade these women’s spaces for their own twisted pleasure. There is no legitimate need or reason for men to be in any of those places at all, yet there they are. That they have been given such access so easily, so eagerly, and in so many countries is a scandal for those who allowed it and a tragedy for the women who have been victimized as a result.
That’s a good rundown, YNnB. Separating the various motivations/etiologies is definitely useful, because each group has different factors influence how they come to the belief, how it gets reinforced, and how they respond to contrary evidence.
They “see” the same thing we all see. But they do know that if you are smart you look deeper than the obvious, and that looking only at the surface is what stupid and bigoted people do.
Smart people (having read Kant) know that “I think therefore I am” is not as convincing as it looks on first sight.
Smart people know that species, despite looking clearly distinct, actually evolve.
Smart people know that space and time are not what they seem.
Smart and non-bigoted people know that despite looking different, members of all races are just human.
So this allows one simple conclusion: reality is always deeper and more complicated than we think. Therefore if you are smart, you should never accept a simple thing at face value. The fact that trans women are usually obviously male just confirms how deep and well-reasoned believing trans ideology actually is. To prove this, you can point to people having DSD or at clownfish etc.
It is exactly the fact that it looks so absurd that makes it attractive to at least some intellectual people and this is probably also part of the reason why so many so-called sceptics fall for it: they have (correctly) become wary of things looking simple and of believing that things are what they look like and so they conclude (incorrectly) that things are never simple and that it is always wrong to believe it could be. So telling them “but this is obvious” only shows how shallow and bigoted you are.
In a sense it is extrapolating the lessons of science to a “credo quia absurdum”.
He should ask them to rename the race. It’s an insensitive reminder of his difference from other women.
But seriously, in this little clip we can see him running on a road with other men and women. The women don’t run separately from the men, they just have their times counted separately. Nothing would change in his participation whatsoever except that he wouldn’t win a prize with his times. In 2020, competing as “Emilia Cameron,” he won the women’s division of the John Dick with a time of 4:15:55. The top actual female came in at 4:19:26. His 4:15 time was 3rd overall; Vikas Malik won it with a time of 4:00:02.
It’s the same race. They ran together, on the same course, at the same time. Malik is faster than Cameron, who is faster than all the women. The argument that it somehow becomes not running if he only gets bronze instead of lady gold is absurd.
@Sonderval #10:
Very insightful, and clearly expressed. This misapplied attitude of “look below the surface, it’s almost always more complicated than it appears to the simple-minded” is I think one of the main motivators for an atheist/skeptic/humanist embrace of gender ideology. It’s a sort of forced-teaming with the theory of evolution to go with the forced teaming with homosexuality and gay rights. The combination leads to a very comfortable, smug certainty that they can’t possibly be wrong. A science-oriented person ought to be just as wary of that.
YNNB #8 is undoubtedly correct about the different motivations. I’ll add in the natural human tendency to think small and personal. Say you have a friend or relative who is trans (or have emotionally bonded with a famous or fictional character you feel you know.) You see no harm in letting this particular person, Pat, be considered to be the gender they believe themselves to be. You even try very hard to see them as they see themselves.
Now — every single time you hear or read about problems with either the application of gender ideology or the claims of gender ideology itself, you plug in your Good Friend Pat. Should Pat be allowed to run? To use the restroom? To change a birth certificate? Forget the statistics, forget the specifics of a case or situation, forget the big picture or the women inconvenienced or worse. Answer as if it’s Pat, just Pat, and you’re accountable to Pat …harmless, friendly Pat who simply wants to be themselves. The side to be on will always be that which places you next to your friend. The pat answer is always Pat.
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Spot on, Sonderval about the desire to believe non-obvious things but you’re a bit more generous about the motives than I can bring myself to be. Belief in non-obvious things is first and foremost a status marker and people in general are far more motivated by emotional considerations than any concern for abstract truth. Holding a non-obvious belief you don’t understand is an easy way to show you’re smart and understand stuff. (Unfortunately it also works in reverse. Promoting an “obvious” belief, that the Earth is flat or space doesn’t expand, in a community that has accepted the non-obvious alternative is a way for delusional to boost their self-esteem which can give those who concern themselves with form over content a stick to beat those of choose to live in reality come what may.)