Originally a comment by Francis Boyle on If they hold a certificate.

What does gender identity have to do with strip-searches?

Because trans ideology is a fundamentally moral enterprise and as such has minimal concerns for any facts or indeed any actual human reality. And as a moral enterprise it is fundamentally social and thus ultimately always resolves its conflicts not by reference to actual human needs (even if it sometimes claims to do so) but by deference to (some understanding of) social status. And men in dresses, however much they are identified as women, and as having always been women, retain their male status. (Apparently a male infant gets an irrevocable certificate of male status at some point that mysterious ceremony at birth during which they are are assigned male. The actual birth certificate, however, can be altered. This certificate, like a bad tattoo on the soul, is forever)

And why is such a blatant absurdity not ignored but rather celebrated and indeed elevated to the status of some sort of divine truth?

Well, from my admittedly heretical point of view it’s because we have taken something that was created during the enlightenment, and out of the trauma following the continent-wide devastation of the Thirty Years War, and made it our model of “morality”, that is, of soft social control. That thing is, of course, the idea of the sovereignty of individual conscience.

I want to be clear here, that I am not, of course, claiming that morality didn’t exist prior to the invention of conscience. Morality has always existed, but for most of human history it was religious or the religion itself – the mandate of heaven in all its forms. What needs to be explained is how a fundamentally religious concept can persist in the minds of thoroughly secular or even irreligious people. And to my mind, understanding the (false) idea of the sovereignty of individual conscience is the key.

In this model the individual obtains a certain status by subscribing to one of the available religious doctrines. Obviously atheism wasn’t available as an option, which I mention only as an illustration of the fundamental limitations of this approach. But once the doctrine is accepted and the status established, the actual way it is applied in a person’s life is entirely a matter of an individual’s conscience. (There are limits, of course. Anyone who pisses off too many people who themselves possess status, or just one person of great status, will quickly find themself out of the club on their arse.)

Now, that might work well in a religious setting where, after all, everything is just made up, but it’s a horrible model for everything else. Remember, the whole purpose of elevating the individual conscience was to get it out of the realm of politics. But here we have a model where a person gains social status, which has a strong, but complex and perilous, relationship to social power and by gaining that status correctly understands that they are authorised to act on behalf of society and in the world (that is to punish, which is to say, harm other people). “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, or the offices of the Guardian, as the case may be.” And that’s not supposed to be a problem? So we have people acting under a societal mandate but when challenged they will claim the privilege of individual conscience. Or rather they will claim both the mandate of society and individual conscience, seeing no conflict in serving two masters. And morality like religion has developed complex mechanisms for simultaneously legitimating and concealing contradictions,so they may well be entirely sincere in their protestations of innocence.

In that it’s a lot like the problem of cranks and conspiracy theorists that plagues the online world. Perhaps it’s the same problem. Doing your own research, thinking for yourself, will get you exactly nowhere. Because nothing we have made was created by individual effort. When The Creature finally comes into the world, it will not be the creation of a lone scientist working in a remote castle but a product of The Frankenstein Company (sole proprietor, the estate of Elon Musk). And that’s the problem. We cannot confront 21st-century problems, let alone those of the twenty-second century (only three quarters of a century away, remember) using social mechanisms created in the 17th and 18th centuries and with their roots firmly planted in the long and oppressive history of religious thought.

Just some apocalyptic thoughts to take you into the new year.