Guest post: What reward can genderists offer?
Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on A historic victory.
I’m still amazed by how many are willing to sign up in support of the new Lysenkoism, oh-so-confident that its current favour and influence will continue for at least as long as the rest of their lives. How can so many people (women particularly) be so easily conned by vapid word games that have no basis in truth? Are they so easily bought, so easily convinced of the power of their language to carve and bend physiological reality? Karl Rove set his sights too low; he settled for playing in the squalid little sandbox of global geopolitics; this lot is (like Lysenko) out to rewrite biology.
I still have to wonder: what’s in it for them? What reward can genderists offer them in exchange for their credibility and reputation, apart from the privilege of not being attacked (which is always provisional and revocable without warning)? Was Paula Gerber forced to write this, or was it completely voluntary? Is vocal support, however poorly reasoned, always more highly rewarded than silence? Is fleeting social cred really that valuable? Are they that blind to the absolute reality-denial upon which this judgement rests? Are their hubris meters all broken?
Men can’t become women, but if enough people talk enough slop fast enough for long enough, it seems everyone gives in.
Browbeating now backed by the power of the state. Pernicious nonsense that is nonetheless doomed to failure because of the stubborn resistance of material reality, but dangerous while it still has the upper hand. But belief in the security and permanence of that power is as sure as an investment in real estate on in icecube in a tropical sea. It can’t last.
To answer the question in the title – they’re climbing the greasy pole. This will go well for them, until it doesn’t. Then they’ll find another grift. (See The History Man.) I suspect that, across the world, many are already working on plan B where none of this ever happened and they were the lone voice of reason against extremists on both sides.
I’m coming to the conclusion that what’s primarily fueling this mental social contagion isn’t misogyny, but the feminine attribute of nurturing run amok — and the responsible parties for the most part aren’t men, but women.
Sure, there are men identifying as women while thrusting themselves wherever they want just like men, but there have always been transvestites testing boundaries. The modern, ubiquitous warm, welcoming embrace of trans inclusion and acceptance, the generous impulse to say and mean “but OF COURSE you are a woman!” looks like it comes right out of the Woman’s Playbook on Being Agreeable and Helping Others. When our increasing sensitivity to minorities met Therapeutic Culture’s increasing sensitivity to everything, it was often mothers and primary school teachers who decided that a healthier, happier, better world started with the children becoming more sensitive to the feelings of those who are weak and unhappy. A noble impulse, certainly — but like a lot of noble impulses there’s an escalating series of increasing opportunities for being noble. Those kids grew up and kept looking further and further up.
Men certainly jumped on board with the idea that this issue is about civil liberties and freedom from constraint, but it’s the tender mercies of the women refusing to notice what’s happening to their rights while smiling and nodding and cooing and putting arms round their fellow “girls” that requires explanation. It’s tempting to think come on, they must know these men aren’t women just as it’s tempting to believe that religious believers don’t really believe there’s an invisible Man on High tenderly watching over them — but I think they’re likely all sincere. The Universe must be Nurturing and Kind and so must we. You see truth better through those lenses.
[…] a comment by Sastra on What reward can genderists […]
Spot on Sastra. I would just add that it works because that’s what moralists have always done – take the natural human desire to protect the weakest members of the tribe (without which we probably wouldn’t be here, being the weak defenceless apes we are) and by a series of metaphysical shenanigans identify protecting the interests of a power elite as the only “proper” realisation of that desire. It’s like an erotic target location error (i.e. a fetish) but culturally imposed on the entire community (except of course the most elite of those power elites – the pope can have as many “nephews” as he wants, not to mention prostitutes).
The difference here is that the power elite here has explicitly constituted itself to exploit that mechanism. There have, no doubt, been many attempts to do this in the past (Christian persecution syndrome comes to mind) but the combination of an ideology that holds all categories are infinitely malleable with its pop-cultural counterpart of “you can be anything you want” has finally made it an attainable goal. (You also need a large under-employed/leisure class with the time and financial resources to devote to the process of transformation – cue Sofie Molly moaning that it’s so unfair he doesn’t have those resources – since if only the pope were trans it wouldn’t work because we all know he’s supposed to be an exception.)
Yes, men, imagining themselves warriors, go for the social justice angle while women are seduced by the nurturing role, but it’s the same sleight of hand underneath – all made possible by the conceit of imagining ourselves as become gods freed from the constraints of mundane reality.
[…] a comment by Francis Boyle on What reward can genderists […]