Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? at Miscellany Room.

A local greenspace was the site for a Pride event today. We went through, checking out the vendors. The last time I felt this out of place was back in the days when I used to do wedding photography, when I ended up shooting a wedding where the parents and pastor did the whole Evangelical, loud, praying over the couple routine. Most of the church weddings I shot tended to be in more staid, bland, formalized, un-zealous traditions, which I found less jarring to my atheist sensibilities. I’ve usually found unbridled, vocal, demonstrative piety disconcerting, partly because displays of delusional thinking, however sincere, are kinda creepy. More creepy because of the sincerity. At this particular wedding, I felt like there was a big, red, neon “UNBELIEVER!” sign blinking above my head. Well, I felt the glow of that long dark sign warming my pate once again as I made my way around the park amongst so many True Believers, the internal monologue of my critical disbelief, and my distaste for trans ideology’s parasitism on Gay Rights kept carefully away from my tongue, like a dog on a halty. (Actually, it wasn’t that hard to keep quiet; I simply observed while channeling my Inner Anthropologist.) I’m both insufficiently curmudgeonly, and too cowardly to Make a Scene; I still have to live in my neighbourhood. I’d rather not be branded the Village Asshole.

The vast majority of flags on display were the forced-teaming Pride-Progress flag, with precious few examples of the original Pride Rainbow flag in evidence. Mission accomplished, trans activism! There were a number of “licorice allsorts” flags that have been cobbled together for and foisted upon the various SOGI micro-demographics/snowflake identities, earnestly carried or worn (presumaby) by members of these subdivisions of specialness. I’m not going to waste any of my time sorting out other people’s investment in (and marketing to) the different shades of narcissistic self-indulgeance to work them all out. I’ll leave that to British Rail.

I saw a number of T-shirts that pissed me off:

“Gender Affirming Health Care Saves Lives” It isn’t “health care” and it doesn’t “save” anybody. Way to promote suicidal ideation and emotional blackmail! So much untruth and bullying in so few words; you have to admire the economy of effort. Slow clap.

“Protect Trans Kids” featuring a tasteful floral wreath and a knife. At least it didn’t show an assault rifle, but we’re talking about Canada here, so a bladed weapon is threat enough to get the point across: “This is not a Request. ” But what it’s really saying is “Protect the Transing of Kids.” The knife is just added incentive and intimidation. If they were actually interested in child welfare and safeguarding, they would be against the very thing they’re promoting. I’m constantly surprised and disappointed at the level of cognitive dissonance that some people can tolerate. One of the unfortunate consequences of “educating myself” by consulting heretical sources. Oh well. My version of the shirt would say “Protect ‘Trans’ Kids”, or better yet, “Protect Kids From Being Transed.”

And then there’s my favourite (which I hadn’t seen before), “You’ll have to go through Me” printed in the trans colours, with the wearer eagerly pledging, in anticipatory, post-Niemöllerian solidarity, protection (unto death?) for trans folk, reinforcing the dishonest Official Narrative that Trans anybody is some sort of helpless, powerless, threatened, beleaguered, and endangered minority in imminent danger of being shovelled into the ovens. If you’ve got events that are sponsored by multiple corporations, and all levels and branches of government, all of which are eagerly pushing acceptance of your agenda, and splashing your flag and its colours everywhere, YOU ARE NOT HELPLESS, OR POWERLESS. Quite the opposite. You’ve already won; now you’re just claiming “victimhood” and fighting dirty to protect your ill-gotten gains, gifted or taken in back room deals to which women (amongst others), were not privy. You’re not the ones they’re out to get. You’re not the target of all of this corporate and government effort and attention: I am. Cue that neon sign.

How many of these people who have bought the narrative (along with the T-shirts) know they’re also throwing their support behind the mutilation and sterilization of children, the erosion and violation of women’s boundaries, the destruction of fairness in sports for girls and women, the imprisonment of violent male predators with women, the suppression of free speech, and other illiberal, ideological positions that the demands of trans “rights” entail? Buy one lie, buy them all. Easy enough to do if you don’t look to closely at what’s in the package, and if you unwittingly outsource your ethical judgements to dishonest narcissists. But once you’ve bought it, it’s yours. Do you keep it, or admit your mistake? How far will you ride the sunk-cost fallacy? How many of these logical consequences of trans ideology would they explicitly defend in so many words if put to the test? Did they know they were signing up for all of this when they accepted the Drag Queen’s shilling?