Guest post: The genderist version of the German-Russian Non-Aggression Pact
Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on To pronoun or not to pronoun.
If “non-binary” has any meaning at all, that meaning should utterly undercut the current notion of “trans”…
This has always been a marriage of convenience to bolster numbers. It’s like the genderist version of the German-Russian Non-Aggression Pact. The “trans umbrella” has so many identities that, if you look for very long at all, are completely contradictory. NB and gender fluid identities both go against the concept of gender as a fixed, internal sense of whatever it’s supposed to be a sense of, but in different ways. Nonbinary identities supposedly stand outside the male/female dichotomy. But how does that work with the trans/cis dichotomy? Meanwhile, gender fluidity involves moving back and forth between the male/female within the binary. How do you reconcile those with each other? How does that work? The same goes for agender or gender neutral. The whole “trans” and “cis” thing depends on everyone having a fixed gender identity which aligns, or doesn’t, with their “assigned” sex. To admit of a group of people who are outside, or beyond, or who slip back and forth kinda buggers up the whole idea. Getting clear definitions of these concepts is like nailing jello to the wall; that’s intentional. That nobody on the genderist side seems to care is interesting. As I noted elsewhere, if genderists were really interested in how this all works, they’d be conducting research on it before going all in on cutting kids up and pumping them full of drugs and hormones. But research and study might just end up showing there’s no there there, only wishful thinking and religious obscurantism.
Not that it’s ever likely to happen (as the unrelenting weight of Reality is likely to make the whole enterprise implode beforehand), but I could see further schisms, purity spirals, and purges if trans activists ever had enough power to be able to eject and discard those supposedly allied “identities” once they were no longer needed. We’ve seen this happen with the L,G, and B, who have been supplanted by the T in many groups and associations, their mission statements bent or rewritten in favour of the arrivistes. Given a chance, the rest of the alphabet soup would be dropped or dumped by the T too. The “validity” of NB “identities” is already a perfunctory, tail-end afterthought in the “TWAW, TMAM” mantra. Do so-called “intersex” or “two-spirit” people get anything at all in return for the instrumentalizing forced-teaming of trans activists? From the former, trans ideologues appropriate the “assigned at birth” terminology; from the latter, the ability to add “white, racist colonialism” to the arsenal of epithets available for use. How long would these other tag along “identities” be tolerated in the circles of trans power once they had outlasted their usefulness?
Indeed it is. It’s particularly interesting when the insouciance is coming from skeptic or atheist communities which up till now have been laser-focused on the weakness of poorly-defined concepts shoring up elaborate edifices of practice.
“Homeopathy works because (garble garble) … okay, whatever, the point is that it works.”
“God exists as (garble garble) … okay, whatever, the point is that He exists.”
“The ‘gender’ in ‘gender identity’ means (garble garble) … okay, whatever, the point is that trans people just want to be accepted as who they truly are.”
There are two common apologetic arguments based on the needs of the believer. The first is that the need of the believer to believe is good reason to think their belief is true. CS Lewis liked this one. The world fits together. We don’t have thirst without water to slake it; the desire for God could not exist without a God to fulfill the desire. Yeah.
The second apologetic is that the need of the believer to believe is good reason to play along with the belief. People who go to psychics who claim to talk to the dead are weak, damaged, and grieving. If they find some comfort here, why take it away from them? They can’t handle the truth. Stop investigating, stop talking. And again— uh huh.
I see both Arguments from the Needs of the Believer being used in transgender doctrine by those who reject them in other contexts. The strong desire to be the opposite sex means that person must actually be the opposite sex. Forget the definitions. No better way to account for it. And given how vulnerable, marginalized, and needy trans people are, why are we blathering on about consistency and coherency? What about compassion?
It’s possible that the (garble garble) doesn’t seem to bother them because something diverted the thought process into an emotional journey: it’s better to be nice than right. Sure.
[…] a comment by Sastra on The genderist version of the German-Russian Non-Aggression […]
The “psychics” these people visit are ghouls, frauds, and charlatans. People seeking treatment for gender dysphoria are seeing people who are supposed to be doctors, who are using unproven, off label drug “therapies”, wrong sex hormones, and surgically removing healthy tissues and organs. Whatever happened to “First, do no harm?” However ” vulnerable, marginalized, and needy” the patients are, the doctors shouldn’t be greasing the skids to a lifetime of dodgy, experimental “medicine”. Without proper follow-up and study of outcomes, how are they even determining the success or efficacy of what they’re doing? Compared to these “treatments”, the cons of psychics, astrologers and homeopaths might be considered relatively benign. At least they’re honest frauds. Here’s Eliza Mondegreen’s take on doctors who practice “gender-affirming care”: https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/ok-lets-talk-about-nazi-doctors.
Yes, what about compassion?
Giving people what they want, ask for, or demand is not always the best, most compassionate thing you can do for them. People don’t always know what’s best for them. This is particularly true of children, which is why they are in a special legal class and status. Letting a child eat all the cake and cookies they want, whenever they want, might seem the kind thing to do, but the health and wellbeing of the child so indulged will suffer. You get the short term satisfaction of being the font-of-perpetual-dessert instead of the responsible, killjoy adult parent or guardian, but in time, the onset of tooth decay, obesity, and diabetes will tarnish that hero status. Once people are adults, you have to let them make their own decisions, but that doesn’t require others to enable or encourage harmful or self-destructive behaviour. Sometimes expert advice and guidance are required. If you pick the wrong expert, you’re in trouble. A doctor who only ever says “yes” to whatever youwant might not give you the care you need. With the redefinition of “conversion therapy”, practitioners who might have been more cautious and careful in turning to pharmaceutical or surgical intervention are likely to be removed from the pool of experts available. You’re now driving a dangerous mountain road where the guardrails have been removed. The person on the phone who’s helping you navigate is telling you to step on the gas. This is what now passes for “medical treatment” of gender dysphoria.
Without proper follow-up and study of outcomes, how are doctors offering “gender-affirming care” even determining the success or efficacy of what they’re doing? Some of them are dishing out the cake and cookies and dealing with its post-operative consequences, all the while “affirming” and convincing the patient that they’ve made the correct selection from the pastry cart.
Or, in the words of Magdalen Berns, “I’d rather be rude than a fucking liar.”
And of course, the irony is, all these people “breaking the binary” are the ones maintaining it. Because without the binary, what are they? Just like the rest of us, which is what they are anyway. Males are males, females are females, and there are damn few individuals, if any, who fit into their gender stereotypes at all times. Some don’t fit in them ever, but most of us are a mix of things from female stereotypes and male stereotypes, with some things that are neither thrown in for good measure.
Pretty neat trick, right? Not such a good model for a liberation movement though, is it? Can you imagine Harriet Tubman kicking back and just telling the rest of the slaves left behind “Sucks to be you!” That’s what all these self-styled enbies and queers are doing to everyone else.
It’s even worse than that. What they are TELLING the patients they are “doing” is not what they are actually doing, for the very simple reason that it CANNOT BE DONE. Human beings cannot change sex. That’s not a thing. No medical, pharmaceutical, or surgical treatment will ever achieve the stated objective. All of the medical, pharmaceutical, and surgical “treatment” is therefore an abject failure before it even begins. The problems lies solely in the mind; only mental health treatment mind can possibly help.
The Trevor Project used to tell gay kids who were suicidal to hang in there, because it does get better. Nowadays, the Trevor Project is telling kids they are doomed to commit suicide if they don’t get to demand experimental drugs and surgery, ASAP. That’s pressure in the other direction; they take away any hope from kids that it will get better with maturity and the freedom that comes with that maturity. It’s criminal, what the T has done to the Trevor Project.
I have found that one of the hardest things for someone done in by the cognitive dissonance resulting from being guilted/emotionally blackmailed into complying with the trans/enby/nutter butter nonsense is exactly this notion:
The reason it’s hard for them to accept isn’t that they don’t understand it. It’s not that they don’t agree with it. It’s that admitting it would bring back the painful dissonance they’re controlling by proclaiming the mystery of faith. To acknowledge the possibility that playing along with the fantasy is enabling an unhealthy delusion would entail their own moral failing by their own standards. It is precisely because they agree with the premise, because they know they shouldn’t have let themselves be pressured to lie, because they don’t want to feel ashamed that they persist. They’re in for a penny, but it looks to them like a pound, so …
Many are too tightly in the grip of Charybdis for naked logic to free them. As I saw it described elsewhere, to reach them requires “building a golden bridge” that allows a return to reason without incrimination.
Excellent summary. You can’t spin straw into gold. If Elliot Page is any indication, the placebo effect doesn’t work for these “patients” either.