Cat exits bag, takes a bow, retires from stage
There’s a very interesting thing here at the beginning.
I haven’t watched the whole thing, but the bit that grabbed me is all I need. The guy on the left of the screen, apparently Jonathan Lis, says this:
This is an attempt, by people who hate trans people –
Sharp interjection from the woman in the navy blue blazer, who is (I think) one of the hosts: “What?!”
Lis goes on:
You push an idea that makes it look ridiculous, makes the idea of identifying as something that you’re not look so ridiculous and preposterous and obscene that obviously no one would ever believe that it could take place in schools –
There. That’s what interests me. Look what he admitted. That trans people are identifying as something that they’re not.
Oops.
Oops indeed. He said the part you’re supposed to keep secret.
Shows what’s really going on. They don’t actually believe that men who identify as women are actually women, no matter how often or vehemently they insist on that belief. Rather, they believe something (if they have any belief beyond nascent, amorphous “yay that”) about the ethics of interacting with men who identify as women.
They commit themselves to ethical principles that demand calling Mortimer’s brother President Roosevelt, based on what certainly seems to me like pity. To feel pity, however, would put one in the superior position, condescending to humor the delusion, and such an attitude is the height of impropriety and bad taste. Avoiding this requires that they maintain the pretense of sharing the delusion.
Maybe the pupil wants to grow up and found Rome.
Additional:
In social circles where the very notion of social hierarchies is anathema (*cough* champagne socialists *cough*), the pity/condescension stance is even less acceptable. That’s gotta have something to do with the Venn diagrams we observe vis-à-vis support for gender nonsense and Critical X Studies stuff.
It’s not the “ridiculousness” of “identifying you’re not” that’s the issue. It’s the fact that that it is unhealthy and dangerous to do so that is the problem. Pointing out the ridiculousness is an act of desperation to get those authorities and institutions which support and enforce trans ideology to recognize the impossibility of the ideas they are forcing on society. In my own comments here at B&W, I’ve used examples like changing species, becoming invisible, or claiming to be made of antimatter. These are extreme examples intended to grab attention, to grab the lapels of the powers that be to try to shake some sense into them, because gender ideology’s core claims, that humans can change sex, and that one can be born into the “wrong” body, are just as extreme and impossible. But to even say any of this is deemed “hateful,” “bigoted,” and “transphobic.”
It is anything but kind to force society to accept the unhealthy, dangerous, impossible, and yes RIDICULOUS tenets of trangenderism. But it’s not the silliness and ludicrousness of the basis for these claims that is the problem (though that should have been enough to dismiss them tout court). It is the danger posed by the continued enactment and enforcement of their demands to the health and well-being of individuals and their families, as well as the ongoing corrosion and destruction of public institutions, and democracy itself. These dangers are not hypothetical or conjectural. They can be measured by the price paid in flesh and blood, women’s freedom and safety, the stifling of public discourse, and the surrender of goverments and corporations themselves to the inordinate power and influence of transgender ideology. They have brought the Trojan Rainbow Gender Unicorn into the heart of governance, business, and media and have used these captured entities to defend their claims and demands by attacking their opponents, going Full Orwell with the power of the police, the courts, and the media. Sex is “assigned at birth.” Criticism is genocide. Resistance is hatred. Stealing anything and everything belonging to women is a “right.” Lies are truth. Mutilation is medicine. Fantasy is reality. Tell me again that we’re the “baddies.” It is not hateful to resist something that is itself hateful. And yes, gender ideology is hateful. And harmful. Just ask women. It is not unkind, evil, or bigoted to refuse to accept and repeat lies.
Genderists accuse their opponents of using “protecting children” or “protecting women’s rights” as some sort of ruse or smokescreen to camouflage the “true purpose” of resistance to their agenda: “hatred” of trans people. Yet genderists are the ones who have to distort and reinvent language itself to hide the truth of their own agenda from the unsuspecting and the gullible. Even from themselves. It’s all euphemisms and lies. We didn’t invent “top surgery.” They’re the ones who have to hide the fact that at the core of their belief system, they’re supporting and promoting the mutilation and sterilization of children, and the destruction of women’s rights. That’s a lot to hide, and a lot to force everyone else to swallow. Yet to a frightening degree they have, for the moment, succeeded. But they have not won. And they never will, because you can’t defeat realty. You can try to hide it, paper it over, and punish those rude enough to point out the true state of things, but that reality will always be there, effortlessly demonstrating the dishonesty and impossibility of their position. You can’t turn the world upside down by trying to force everyone to stand on their heads. You will never fool gravity. And given the harms that have already been inflicted upon both children and women by trans ideology, I’d say that that’s a pretty good goddamned reason to oppose genderism. How do they argue for it? How do they make their case. That’s right, THEY DON’T. Because they can’t. That’s the whole point of “NO DEBATE!” They have nothing but bullying, lies, and emotional blackmail. They oppose any studies of the actual rates of success of the supposedly “lifesaving, gender-affirming care” they champion. They force women to call their male assailants “her” or “she” and force women in prison to be housed with dangerous, male criminals convicted of violent, sexual crimes because these sexual predators suddenly claim to be women. If it wasn’t cruel sadism, it would be laughable.
CIVIL SERVANT 1: Hey, let’s put violent, male rapists into women’s prisons!
CIVIL SERVANT 2: Yes, what a great idea! Make sure they put on a wig and some lipstick first, so nobody will notice!
CS1: Nobody important anyhow!
CS2: Women? PHHHFT! As if!
BOTH: HAHAHAHA!
You’d never accept it as satirical fiction; it’s just too over the top. Any editor having this cross their desk would fire their client and send them packing. Yet here we have the state-sanctioned, judicial and carceral equivalent of enacting Swift’s proposal to barbecue and eat Irish babies.
Is any of this “kind” or “good”? With this kind of track record, WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULDN’T OPPOSE GENDERIST? Would they have been able to force any of these horrific results without lies, bullying, and intimidation? These are but a few of the signal “victories” of self-styled, trans “rights,” “social justice warriors.” How are these outcomes “just” or good for “society”? They aren’t. But they did get the “war” part right, because war it is. Call it a “culture war” if you will. But as far as society goes, this is a war of self defence, because they shot first.
Ooops. First sentence, right out of the gate:
It’s not the “ridiculousness” of “identifying as something that you’re not” that’s the issue.
Bravo, not Bruce. Another tour de force.
If only the people who have influence were reading B&W, this could have been over years ago.
[…] a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Cat exits bag, takes a bow, retires from […]
Jonathon’s main argument is summed up in his analogy: bringing up children identifying as wolves is like bringing up people wanting to marry their horse. The only reason anyone makes this nonsense an “important issue” is because they hope to undermine the legitimacy of what isn’t nonsensical. Gay people have a right to marry each other because they are human and thus willing and capable of making the legal commitment of marriage just like everyone else; trans children have a right to be believed when they reject their sex because they are human and thus willing and capable of being legally recognized as their true gender just like everyone else.
Leaving aside the fact that no, those two situations are not equally straightforward and realistic (far from it,) the video revealed a difference between the way Jonathon treats the two situations he sees as analogous. He would apparently agree that someone marrying their horse is “ridiculous and preposterous and obscene.” That’s why he’s using the strong language.
But he is clearly not going to agree that a child identifying as a wolf is similarly ridiculous and preposterous and obscene. He frantically tries every trick in the book to avoid saying “since no child is really a wolf no school should treat them as if they were — BUT here’s where being trans is different!” He knows making that reasonable admission in this case opens up a can of worms.The trans child dogma is inextricably linked to children “knowing themselves” and the moral mandate to “be kind.” Once we start hemming and hawing over how appropriate that is, the rest unravels.
Thank you.
If only it were that simple! They’ve got to be made to realize that the political cost of carrying out the demands of transgenderism outweigh the benefits, real or imagined, of supporting them. If they could be disabused of the idea that trans “rights” are in any way progressive, that would be a great start, but it’s a hard sell.
Some years ago I wrote to my (then) MP (Liberal Party of Canada) about my concerns around a bill that criminalized “conversion therapy,” with “T” forced-teaming its way into thsee provisions against LGB conversion “therapy”, thereby muddying the waters and making clinicians think twice about any courses of action other than those “affirming” a patient’s “gender identity. I posted my letter here:
https://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2020/miscellany-room-6/#comment-2839219
and her response here:
https://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2020/miscellany-room-6/#comment-2847947
She ignored most of my points regarding desistors, detransitioners, and “transing away the gay,” and concluded by saying she was proud to have supported the bill as written, and that such protections were “a long time coming.” Obviously, she believed that these measures were indeed “progressive” and it would take much more than a letter or essay to snap her out of this delusion. I’m guessing that given the reason-bypassing tribalism in play around this issue in Canada, she probably wrote me off as a right wing nutter, even though my letter used no religious arguments, and made clear my support of rights for gays and lesbians.
I’m guessing she didn’t even bother reading your points. The barest whiff of heresy marked you as, well, a heretic, and a heretic is not to be listened to. Listening to a heretic is dangerous, because he might deceive you and lead you away from the true faith. Ignoring the heretic is therefore virtuous. Apostasy is so abjectly horrible that it is better to err on the side of a potential Type I error and ignore someone who might be making sense than to commit a Type II error and mistakenly open the door to a heretic.