some of it is just an emergent property of social and interactive media.
some of it is academics seeking to play status games.
some of it is politicians seeking power and patronage and the whims of whomever is buying them right now.
some of it is foreign interference and psy-op.
lots of people and and lots of systems have incentives (or emergent tendencies) to act badly here. it's almost impossible to peel it apart and find a "source" to shut off.
i think the best plan is to realize the phenomenon and its roots in perception bias and to seek to deny it purchase and to turn on those who stir this pot in each individual instance and to shrove back against it so they it becomes a cost and not a benefit for them.
I think it's root cause and why the racket is so "sticky" and pervasive is because it is both upstream and downstream, simultaneously, with politics/government.
A well greased looped conveyor belt of grift between the two.
it IS programming, and once recognized as such, it cannot be unseen. it’s like exposing the great and powerful oz bustling about frantically behind the curtain. the truth is that he has no real power. each person has power, and many surrender it unwittingly to an illusion for a very long time.
I agree that media and entertainment messaging exaggerates the actual number of "trans" people, but you are wrong to think this was a confluence of different groups with bad intentions. This was a plan hatched by billionaire men with predilections who have been threatening and/or buying off media and academia for the past fifteen to twenty years, perhaps longer. Kinda like pharma. They want to disconnect human beings from our sexed reality in their dream of a transhumanist future. Children are their natural target. They're all part of the same cult. They are all deranged. We (humanity) have done what we usually do when these oddities arise. We ignored it thinking it would go away. But it hasn't gone away. It's only gotten worse. And, yes, it's finally gotten so bad that even the woke lovelies who just care soooo much are finally awakening to the risk.
"I recommend you read Jennifer Bilek's substack. She's also written a book on the subject.
Agree with this. I also have strong suspicions that jabs and meds and food (and other environmental pollution) are contributing to serious hormonal imbalances, especially in the young.
I am curious though: at such low numbers, how do less than 1% (trannies) & 3% (gays) garner such status, power, victim claims? Why are politicians & corporations bending backward to enable? Certainly an even greater minority (I’d like to believe the majorities of those minorities want to be left alone like the rest of us) of factions of the LGBTQ+ alphabet people are disruptive & even damaging to family, traditional values, religion & shared culture but how do such truly minority groups wield such power over the majority?
Maybe it's a triple-layer thing in both cases. A large, open society, in which lives a vulnerable minority that demands the right to exist and behave on their own terms. And within that vulnerable minority, a smaller, activist group that claims to represent and protect that minority from all the Anti's and Phobes out there that want to kill them. The vulnerable minority mostly goes along with its own activists, partly because of their protection and partly because they know the activists can destroy them individually if they object. The activists have to keep attacking the larger society to stay relevant, and the vulnerable minority eventually suffers the backlash.
Putting people under virtual martial law for a couple years helped ramp up this “fear of the other” tactic that works so well for the army kill machines. Falling into these traps won’t end well for anyone. You’ve really packed into one essay every reason why, in a lovely and kind manner.
This cuts through too ; brilliant commentary and then join Jennifer Bilek's research into the fray... Its fairly dystopian;https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RpeagcaBToU
Divisiveness has always been an effective political tool. Divide and conquer works. There is lot to be gained stirring that pot in ways that create anger and hate.
There's also another aspect that make certain people vulnerable to division in an ironic way. Homosexuality has not always been accepted, or tolerated, in the west (and still is not in many places in the world). Humans are tribal, and have a desire to "belong". The irony is that joining groups is driven by a desire to come together, and that desire is often used to drive people apart. Just wanting to know you're not alone is natural human desire. Seeking supportive groups is healthy. But it also creates an opportunity for the oppressive to feed your fear of "going back" to when you could not "be you" overtly and without fear. Which is a natural fear, but also one that can be exploited and which can lead to being worse off than the past you fear!
Pretty sure it’s Marxist and Marxist-lineage academics brainwashing a critical mass of the elite into finding moral gratification from this (or at least getting used to shutting up and not fighting the DEI administrators and profs). Per James Lindsay.
The same people, in their ivory towers with their "long view", that are pushing us against each other, not pulling us apart, to deflect from what we know to be true on the ground we stand upon, for their benefit...at our expense.
The battle line is manufactured to produce an ever widening chasm that further separates the ivory towers from the fault line.
The people I knew in academia didn't have a "long view", or at least not much of one. In the business world, I was always exposed to scenario planning. On a large complex engineering project you have contingency plans in case things don't go as planned - and they rarely do! You need to game out your propsed solutions and make sure it's robust, because failure can be financially fatal. Academics in the sciences seldom do this. They are not driven to get it right the first time. They see failures as learning opportunities, and they can do this because the research process, not the results are what's important. Liberal Arts academics have almost no long view. They seem to latch on to whatever unworkable theory is in vouge. If you try to game out the results of these theories, you find that they are either overly simplistic or outright stupid. Confront them with questions like "What happens if A occurs or if B occurs?" and they become agitated and angry when they can't answer. So how come I can come up with a question off the top of my head during a conversation about a social theory, and they, who are professional proponents of this idea, Ph.D.s, who should understand something about the implications and implementation of this theory, and beyond that, advocate it be forced on humanity, can't answer it? It's the equivalent of asking an engineer who advocates for 100% solar power "What do you do when the sun isn't shining?", and them not being able to answer the question.
Lol. I worked with fat-headed academics, who really believe because they wear a Ph.D. they are never wrong, and can’t be fooled. Many have also gone through the tenure system, which is created to disable critical thinking, and that grant fulfillment is their highest calling in service of the institution. They are greatly rewarded for having the results of corporate and foundation funding research reflect the desired outcome of the donor.
Big pharma...Trans are lifetime subscribers. The whole purpose of the pharma industry as well as the medical industrial complex today is to keep you coming back. Not to improve your health. I bet there is a marketing team reaping bonus rewards for a job well done. Go pfeizer!!...mandate a vaccine that causes clots so you can keep your eliquis( anti clot) drug making you millions. So many examples out there....and all well coordinated due to the sponsors concerted efforts. They own everyone!! Luckily not Substack 😁
First turn of all msm including the Olympics. Boycott gb news, talkradio, any media that insists on carrying out the agendas for the incompetent politicians in office. Be honest, wouldn’t you rather listen to great music.
I have grown to realise that like most mainstream film is propaganda so a large portion of syndicated music is too. The cult of the person is a perfect tool to trap people and once invested into it they can be fed subtle lies.
The "Rich men north of Richmond" event illustrates it perfectly. The song was at the top of streaming for a while and has been removed from all controlled media. There is a place for music and while I am not a rap music fan the piece "Brainwashed" by Tom MacDonald should provide balance. His steps to control people in the song are credible. Until you are big enough you will be silenced if you are against the narrative.
I don't think Gato really gets this one. I see an international cabal pushing these agendas with the intention of causing divisions in the culture as they install the totalitarian New World Order.
I suspect cryptocurrency will become very important to our civilization’s survival in the very near future.
Every instance in the past where we debauch culture to the point of monetary collapse has resulted in hyperinflation. But never before have we had a legitimate alternative currency, so it will be interesting to watch it play out.
I very much am looking forward to the grievance-based government having to beg for their taxes.
Our systems are fully corrupted. The biggest problem humanity faces today is that we have lost all trust in our systems. Society cannot function without trustworthy systems.
To fix it we must build a new one that is much much harder to corrupt that is 100% controlled by the people, and we use it to hold the other corrupted systems accountable.
In the end we need to teach the kids what ever religion you want behind their parents back to make them stop. Help kids get baptized and see how that goes off at home.
i suspect you are correct about the majority. it's predominantly a pathologically group that has come to prominence because society has been granting high status to the most performatively demanding/aggrieved. you can see it in the suicide rates, rates of depression, self-harm etc. it carries the markers of illness, not identity. the overall trans movement has become incredibly problematic and damaging.
but this is not universal and that's worth remembering too. there are cases of good people just trying to lead peaceful lives. i think, like many things, it needs to be case by case and approached with a bit of charity.
Not when they wre brainwashing our kids..I am a teacher I know 2 already who are transitioning in 5th grade and a high schooler who just committed suicide. It's done over the
Internet parents are oblivious or active participants. Why can't that internet chat rooms and websites be censored instead of the govt censoring anyone who speaks out with a different opinion?
It is a wholesale assault against these kids and parents are so busy working they can't monitor every damn minute. Someone in power is jamming this assault through...I know Larry Finks been pushing the DEI but who the hell is behind this assault? It's not a bottoms up thing..it's deliberate organized and financed...by powerful people.(see my comment below). We need to know who and why..this is not a natural social phenomenan...and i want to know 8f irs part and parcel of the tear it all down WEF...
A very dear friend was trans, and she was tortured since childhood with the actual thing that is gender dysphoria. She finally went through months of therapy past middle age before any medical treatments were allowed, all she wanted were hormones. She just wanted to pass and live her life, not make any racket. She was exceptionally kind, brilliant, generous, talented, valued and much beloved by everyone with enough sense to not give a damn about the rest. Her emotional damage came from societal perceptions that she knew would have made her a reviled outcast if she’d said a word about her feelings. I’m glad she didn’t live to see the hideous spectacle that’s been made of the very few like her.
Used to go to gay bars, drag shoes in the 70’s, in Chicago. They were fun and the drag queens primarily kind, decent people. Have to admit, living in Devon england and mixing with mostly elderly straight people, Iife is a bit different.
Honestly, the Peruvians have the right of it, by refusing to acknowledge "Trans" as anything but mental illness. One of the most revolting things in the Trans manifesto (besides the obvious) is their demand to have control of the language. Once you're using stupid terms like "Cis" or "Genderfluid", you've already conceded defeat.
It's important to step back and remember the Marxist Left's playbook. They recognize that language is a weapon. Since many of them are overly educated Grievance Studies majors, they're well versed in the art of language corruption.
The only way to respond to their demands is with Rejection, with a side helping of Public Ridicule.
I tend to agree with you about "Genderfluid," but "Cis" is actually a useful term that just means "normal, not Trans." It's like the "Hetero" counter-term to "Homo" when referring to sexual orientation.
Consider this analogy: we can all probably think of an obese person who eats what they want, barely exercises, but is in generally good health, and perhaps might even live into their 80's and 90's. That doesn't mean that obesity should be promoted as a "lifestyle choice", with state-mandated "body positivity" training. It looks ludicrous at first glance, because it is. No doctor in his right mind, who wanted to keep his license, would prescribe six Big Macs a day under the guise of "body type confirming care". Nobody looks at a Wal-Mart filled with gasping, heaving blobs on Rascal scooters and thinks "this is healthy".
The trans movement, and its relationship to identity and mental health, is no different. In the "yeah but" game, you can probably find a perfectly adjusted trans person calmly living their live and contributing positively to society. For every one of those, I'll effortlessly find you a hundred purple-haired screeching maniacs who were never popular in school, couldn't get their daddy to pay attention to them, or have a bedroom wall filled with participation trophies. A mentally healthy trans person is a statistically radical outlier, like an obese professional athlete, or a deaf concert pianist. It's not impossible, but nobody starts their child on a path to Carnagie Hall by whipping out a scalpel and lopping off the ol' ears.
Yes. They often are damaged or even autistic but still encouraged and counseled to go for it. I now know the therapists, psychologists and such are totally in on making sure transitions happen. It is evil child sacrifice.
Absolutely. In abnormal psych, I learned the DSM 4 and earlier called it Gender Identity Disorder. Don’t know if they completely erased it now. It was a rigorously diagnosable disorder, not a flavor of the day.
Excellent piece, Gato, but here's the problem: "Tolerance" is what got us to where we are today. Any fellow X'ers out there have witnessed the victim-scam's lifecycle: Protect -> Tolerance -> Celebrate -> Promote -> Mandatory Worship. If if anyone thinks that sounds a little over the top, scroll back up and look again at that photo collage of degeneracy, most of which was likely snapped during our State-Enforced Month of Pride-Worship.
The most baffling part of the Trans lunacy to me is: how the blazes did such a minuscule percentage of the population achieve total dominance over the prominent culture in less than five years? I absolutely hate sounding like a tinfoil-hat philosopher, but there's simply no way that happens without concerted effort and mountains of cash. One might think that Trans-Wokeness might be happy with what they've achieved, and rest on its rainbow throne to consolidate its gains. But it can't. Like you said, The Church of Victimhood must always move forward. Compromise is not in its nature. Get ready for July to be rechristened as "Bestiality and Pedophilia Month" in a few years. That garish flag will get a pawprint and a pacifier added to it.
And I have no idea how to fight it while preserving our classic Western values. There's no way to preserve some shred of decency without engaging in the tiring, pedantic game of "But Muh Freedoms! You're all Hitlers!" But fight it we must, because this simply isn't some kind of natural, cultural devolution. It's a movement: financed, coordinated, pushed down our throats with every breath. It's cultural Cancer, and it's a civilization killer.
"tolerance" is and must be the basis for a rights based society, free people, and a repubilc.
my right to speech must inherently entail tolerance of your right to speak as well even and especially when you say something with which i disagree.
you literally cannot have these things without tolerance and so one cannot draw the line there and say "no."
where the line must be drawn is "coercion" the difference between "accept me?" and "accept me!" (or else).
trans is the final form of the performative aggrievement pokemon. we called marginalization "status" and sought to elevate it thru CRT, DEI, gender theory etc. this ultimately selects for the very maddest and most marginal people with the greatest ability to make outlandish performative demands. that's trans.
they won the fight to be "more marginal than thou" by being more deranged and daring.
western values involve quite a lot of "live and let live." what broke them is letting actual crazy people make demands of everyone else in the name of some deluded notion of "equity."
it's putting the lunatics in charge of the asylum.
yeah, and, dare I say it, oftentimes the men (who want to be women) behave like the worst of men -- aggressive, competitive, obsessive, not really giving a sh!t about who they crush on their way to total victory and dominance.... like this boxer thing -- how perfectly the gender stereotypes matched that little display -- the woman, afraid, injured, in pain, quits, and cries in public. the "man," is like, "whatev's -- it's all fair to win, right? just a game?" and is proudly going on to beat on the next woman. "He" is going to use his advantages in order to win, naturally.
Can’t help but wonder if those “Olympic” boxers & their deplorable “wins” could turn the tide on this insanity. Re the excuses that they were assigned female sex @ birth but have those pesky XY chromes, I don’t buy it for a minute: I’d like to see them have to pull down their boxing shorts & prove it
they are male all the way, regardless of what “parts” are visible. And they know it, and the IOC knows it, and their coaches and countries know it — but they want the Gold Medal. They win easily without any skill and are not doubt “holding back” the same way Lia Thomas did.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this (too much, really) and I’m thinking that the Olympic committee thinks like this: “Algeria says this is a woman. If we argue with them, they’ll get mad, claim racism, etc. etc, maybe even riot and or god knows what else. You know how it goes. And who cares about boxing anyway?”
100%. Our satanic masters want to be able to pick any kid out anytime they want and have sex with them on the street.
And you know something? It will only make them bored afterwards. we will be giving up all our rights and children suffer, and the rich will get bored with it within minutes. God knows what will come up with after that?
I think that tolerance only works when schooling is optional, at least insofar as where families choose to get it. As far as I'm concerned, that's the whole game. If all schooling were up to the choices of the parents, the culture wars STOP MATTERING and we can all go back to tolerating each other's adult choices. If another adult gets to choose what my children are learning, I have to make sure that at least a minimum subset of behaviors are absolutely unacceptable in open society, because that's the only way to keep them from being taught as *positive* in schools by teachers that I don't get opportunity to reject.
I think that tolerance only becomes relevant if we live in an open society of the Karl Popper kind, and that at present most Westerners don't have that privilege. The question before most of us now is do we continue to tolerate our remaining freedoms being stripped away or do we get to the point where we cease to tolerate what is bound to eventually become intolerable to us.
I agree for sure, but the thing is when we started tolerating anything that adults did with each other. That’s when it started. that’s when this whole perversion got worse and worse and worse until we are letting children become victims. Innocent children.
Or is what we're seeing the inevitable consequence of liberalism and atheism/materialism (or the Enlightenment) taken to its logical conclusion. Many properties, when taken too far, do not get further from their opposite but (eventually) come full circle and turn into their opposite. If you take tolerance too far, it becomes intolerance. If we are free to be whatever we want, If we are each our own little gods, able to create ourselves as we see fit, then our limitless freedom comes full circle and becomes tyranny. Inevitably. The only thing that prevented it from happening to this degree in the past is that the vast majority of people had a shared myth--and I don't mean myth in the modern pejorative sense of that word but in the sense of a shared metaphysical truth underlying reality. Now, embarrassed by our own myth, we devolve into chaos. Nietzsche predicted this.
I think this is behind people like Bill Maher, Richard Dawkins, Joe Rogan, Jordan Petersen, etc. coming out in support in varying degrees of cultural Judeo-Christian morality. Dawkins in particular seems to be seeing the repercussions of tearing down the framework for social norms and morality and what creeps in and takes up that void. He tends to want to point to Islam mostly and avoids nihilism and postmodernism and the end outcome Nietzche predicted.
I think I read that there are a few very very rich trans men paying for all this propaganda. It was in Helen Joyce's book, "Trans." Great book. She was/is a writer for the Economist for many years.
Peter, I would say your comment is even more excellent than Gato’s piece. He makes many solid points, but your point about where tolerance has led trumps them, in my opinion.
And I *know* I sound like a crotchety old white guy on the front porch, complaining about the kids and their music and why-don't-they-pull-up-their-pants. But the sad truth is that naive Tolerance is what led us here. There's an old figure of speech once used to denigrate liberals: to be so open-minded that your brain falls out. That's America 2024.
One tricky part is that we’re constantly being forced into the dichotomy. There’s no option “C” when confronted with a depressed and flabby androgyne teenager with man boobs insisting on being called “she/her.” This is how they shake the jar. We can all acknowledge that the jar shakers are the problem, but we’re still in the jar.
As for the income perception, you’re right on, but I think it’s trebly compounded by the very real pain that people with even low 6figure incomes are feeling, trying to maintain a household.
i think high inflation and massive competition from waves of immigration is colliding with the high prevalence of 2 income households to make life much more difficult and expensive, especially for the young and single earners.
the perception of this difficulty and the relative position that people think they inhabit makes their sense of this far worse. 80th percentile earners feel like 40th percentile because their perceptions are so skewed by instagram and even those who realize they are high earners wind up competing for thinks like homes against couple who are both high earners and thus still wind up priced out of tight markets where it's difficult to add supply to meet demand. then you get barraged with videos of 22 year olds on private jets.
people perceive well being and status in relative and not absolute terms. it's just how humans are wired and the global reach of the social media comparator set turns this into something truly oppressive. it's not longer enough to be the rich guy or the pretty girl or the top athlete in your town. you're competing for eyeballs with the prettiest and richest and most athletic in the world and it's brutal out there. you wind up sad not to be a kardashian rather than realizing how exceptional you are.
I am listening to “Cue the Sun” by Emily Nussbaum that traces the evolution of reality entertainment from 1930s radio to present day cable and streaming. In her account, reality shows such as Kardashians and the Real Housewives became hits in the aftermath of 2008’s financial meltdown. The head of Bravo tv deliberately programmed shows flaunting lifestyles of the rich, soon to be famous, to appeal to those who she called “affluencers.” Flaunting wealth begat more flaunting, more envy, and more despair, in my view.
I’ve thought since the very beginning the Kardashians were a media created psy-op to distort how the wealthy became wealthy and how they lived their lives. It was the creation of the ultimate straw man view to mock wealth afforded by capitalism. Making the wealthy seem as entitled, lazy, lucky, and loathsome as the worst stereotypes suggested.
How did Elizabethans start wearing idiot fashions like ruffs? Why did upper-class English and American women of centuries previous to ours wear idiot fashions like hoop skirts and bustles? Imagine if there were streaming services back then.
Elizabethans and English and American women of centuries ago were living in temperate climates during the Little Ice Age, without foam insulation or fossil-fuel powered heating. I wonder how well ruffs and hoop skirts work for retaining body warmth in frigid homes?
Still, I would think there would be room for a few undergarments under a hoop skirt. And I have the impression that SCA ladies in medieval and Tudor garb tend to suffer from the heat at summertime camping events.
I see how that has played out for me, personally, in the early days of starting my business. Every time I would hit a milestone that was beyond my greatest dreams of just a year ago, I would immediately feel like I was failing, because it wasn't twice that.
The perception that it's only hard for some of us, while there's some enormous District One full of people lolling about on yachts, definitely leads to very bad decisions in the social sphere. If more people understood that the greater DC area is one of the fastest-growing, and highest-concentration areas of massive wealth, we might actually make some progress. They want to eat the wrong rich.
Inverting the question "where does poverty come from?" to "where does wealth come from?" appears to be an extremely effective koan. When one understands that absolute poverty is the default state, one is less likely to take the unimaginable comforts of our current situation for granted.
However, most people don't understand what inflation is, and does. It doesn't just contribute to the natural anxiety of future uncertainty - it creates certainty that the future, materially-speaking, is being stolen. Recognizing that and dealing with it as a fact of life akin to mortality is a powerful means of gaining control over runaway neuroticism, but it's hard to get one's head around because it's not, technically, inevitable. Just baked into human nature.
"Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
I’m not sure it has anything to do with instagram. People see other people buying houses and cars that are exorbitantly priced and say out loud “How the hell can anyone afford that!” That phrase is the mantra of our time and I hear it over and over from all kinds of people. People of all incomes and ages and demographics. And I indeed, how the hell are people buying houses that cost this much?
When consumer debt became a way of life for everyone, those signals started being erroneous, and a lot of people don't realize that. Some of the most stressed-out cash-strapped people I have known have lived lives full of material trappings, but they were a breath from bankruptcy at every moment.
It’s called buying on credit. My son (29) & his wife just built a modest home (3 bed / 2 bath but only 1400 sf) even though they could have afforded at least somewhat more. They have watched their friends max out credit to the hilt w/ fancy homes, cars, swank vacations & luxury goods they don’t need, & they want no part of it. Not sure if it’s nature or nurture but I’m grateful he at least has a common sense head.
For what it's worth, I've observed rather a lot of people "buy" homes that are far above what they could reasonably afford. After a period of time and given their likelihood to overspend on other things as well, they would end up in debt up to their eyeballs and in a lot of cases, eventually would get foreclosed on their homes, lose their big boats and cars, etc. and perhaps file for bankruptcy. They could keep things up for a period of time, and then everything would collapse.
Exactly...I'm good-looking, but not compared to the filtered Instagram people. Luckily I live in a forest with my dogs and cats. They don't see Instagram and still think I'm pretty special. 🤣
Speaking of eyeballs, el gato malo, I was asked to explain a piece by Holman Jenkins this week in the WSJ about the NBA kerfuffle when they went with Amazon and spurned Warner’s. It discussed that the era of streaming offering a huge choice of high quality shows and movies virtually ad free is coming to a close, because the only way to keep growing profits is…selling ads. It’s our eyeballs that are the product—as we have learned before.
When I was born, real middle-class men with sensible shoes and valued reputations would step in to end confrontations with the threat or delivery of a punch in the mouth. Women in safe public spaces who found a stranger’s hand on their bottom would regift a sharp slap across the cad’s mouth. Yes, this happened, no it wasn’t like gang violence, yes, the crowd around would support the exchange and other people might join in, yes the perpetrator usually gave up quickly and apologized and yes I saw all this with my own eyes.
There is a viral video right now of a recent college grad suburban white dude stealing the duckbill cap Deon the head of an overbuilt hulk like gym owner. The owner slaps him and physically retrieves his hat. “Actually?” The totally befuddled dude asks. Yes. Actually. The copter mom idea that you either rely on the state to police every interaction no matter how minor or simply surrender to every social disruptor is part of a well studied totalitarian technique.
Just curious, gato, whether you would use “preferred pronouns” for every trans person you meet. I like that it’s not an absolute, and you refer easily to your waitress as “she,” however, I find that the militancy behind “use the right pronoun or else” to be deeply offensive and an attempt to break down my own sense of reality and the world around me. I draw the line of respect for others identity at the point it tears at my own.
no, i would not. i really dislike "pronoun demands." in fact, i actively resist such ideas and detest the inclusion of "pronouns in signature block" on emails, especially for those listing the pronouns that they were born into as some sort of "alliance."
i find it oppressive, obnoxious, and a sort of douchey virtue signal or flex.
i struggle to imagine a situation in which i would call someone "zey/zem" or some such as i find the whole thing self-indulgent and pathological. but, and this is a meaningful but, in the example of the waitress i mentioned, she has never asked me for anything. there was no demand, just a peaceful person living a calm life. i see no reason she cannot nor any reason to fail to be friendly and accommodative within reasonable bounds.
if it turned out such a person had male genitalia and wanted to shower in a locker room with girls, my view on accommodation would change. it's really about the ask and whether it's reasonable or intrusive. these issues can be very difficult to create hard and fast rules around.
consider a really simple example: beach towels.
you're at the beach laying on your towel. a stranger arrives and lays down their towel. there is some distance away where this is perfectly acceptable, polite, and reasonable. but if they came and laid it one millimeter from yours then laid down, nearly everyone would find that obnoxious and intrusive to the point of threat.
so where is the line? how far away starts to be OK? can there be any real objective standard? it's sort of a nested "it depends" that has many different axes that come together to determine such a thing.
there's never going to be a hard and fast answer and such answers as exist tend to be highly situational. an awful lot of social tolerance and acceptance works like this. it's sort of a morass of nuance and case based situational determinants.
more than anything, i think it's the people demanding hard and fast rules that are causing the problem. "you must comply with my demand or it's hate speech" is a form of assault. it take from you your right to self determination and forces you to speak and act as others demand. that is not basis for civilization.
Today I overheard my 19 and 24 year old girls discussing the Olympic boxing fiasco. I was shocked to hear them both say that Angela Carini was just a cry baby and that didn't she expect to get punched hard in the Olympics. She is such a cry baby that she quit after 46 seconds!
I was so upset I didn't know what to say, especially since I wasn't part of the conversation in the first place, and I walked away. I haven't figured out what to say to them that will penetrate their belief system.
With due respect, I wonder if your girls' problem is not their belief system, but their lack thereof? I think that's the real problem with most people who embrace whatever dumbshit fad happens to be the latest thing. The think their beliefs don't need to have the organic unity and consistency of a system, but are to be tailored freely and opportunistically in accordance with perceived social advantage (virtue-signaling instead of real virtue).
What you say might be technically correct. However, I was simply trying to express that they weren't going to listen to me as they have made up their minds. Recently I have come to realize that they care deeply about trans-rights, so much so that they won't discuss any different viewpoints. They have been brainwashed and are too young to realize this.
Before trans ideology became a thing, women might have quietly tolerated the (very?)occasional non-aggressive trans "woman" in a public restroom because they understood the peril a trans "woman" might face in a public men's restroom. Now that everyone has been coerced into accepting biological men in women's spaces, trans "women" like your waitress AND women are ultimately less protected.
The old school transexuals didnt have dicks. The medical protocol was 2 years of hormones and living "as a woman," then "sex change" operation (surgery to remove genitals and use penis skin to line the pseudo vagina and fake vulva fashioned from scrotal skin.). The overwhelming majority of transexuals were homosexuals, attracted to men.
The majority of today's "transgender women" are male heterosexuals, most of keep their dicks because they are fetishists or paraphiliacs. They objected to the transexual medical protocol as "gatekeeping." Autogynephilia is very common among billionaires.
AND they are identity thieves, claiming to be lesbians and calling female homosexual women (the real lesbians) bigots for not wanting to perform fellatio on them. BTW: contrary to how lesbians are portrayed in porn, in Real Life lesbians do NOT have sex with men.
Exactly. The 'hard and fast' rules are the reason that men are serving time in women's prisons. The rule-makers don't seem to understand that a certain segment of society will game the rules for their own gain.
But don’t we only use he or she when talking to a third person about that he or she - often when the he or she isn’t there to hear his or her pronouns? In the presence of he or she don’t we either use the person’s name or nothing at all? For example ‘Hello there! Could I have a coffee, please? Thanks!’ Or ‘Hello Anne, could I have a coffee please? Thanks!’ It is very easy to avoid a person’s pronouns.
"if it turned out such a person had male genitalia and wanted to shower in a locker room with girls, my view on accommodation would change" -- exactly. IOW, your view on tolerance would change. IOW, it's not actually about tolerance, per se, at all. It's always actually about the substantive question of the good, and in relation to *that* and as a function of *that* -- i.e., a substantive vision of the Good (not some arbitrarily truncated libertarian vision thereof) -- what should be tolerated and what should not. Tolerance is no more a good thing per se than discrimination is a bad thing per se. "I'm good b/c I'm tolerant and you're bad b/c you discriminate" is utterly hypocritical virtue-signaling bullshit, always, whoever is saying it.
It's a free country (just about), so they have the right to pretend whatever they want. However, they don't have the right to make us share their mental illness, and above all, they don't have to right to push their crap on to our kids. A trans "woman" is, for me, a man dressed in woman's clothes and always will be. And I don't give a damn how offended they are. The shit has got to stop.
You hit the nail on the head. I don't have an issue with using someone's preferred pronouns as long as they give me grace when I make a mistake based on a five o'clock shadow and adam's apple. I resent it being pushed on children and I resent being viewed as evil for resenting it. As a tomboy from birth, gifted with brothers, sons and mostly male friends, I could easily have been gaslit into thinking I was a boy as a 6 year old. That scares the hell out of me for all of the tomboys out there, some of who ended up being merely gay and many of us ended up becoming strong straight women. I resent the laws around facilitating teachers being in "secret societies" with children as they undermine parental relationships and their ability to inculcate their own culture in their kids.
Re. "...civilization... we used to have this..." We're hardly the first to collapse. The question few seem to be asking is: what *ought* to be the basis of our commonality? Niceness? Civility? Live-and-let-live? "Tolerance"? (hot tip: we tried that; it failed big) Rodney Kingism (1991: "can't we all just get along?") Not-shaking-the-jarism?
The Bible says (in 2nd Thessalonians 2) that when people reject the Truth (capital T intentional; John 14:6; Jesus) and take pleasure in things which do not conform to God's created order or moral law, He will send them a "strong delusion" so that their so-called civilization-on-their-own-terms, by their own standards, with their own made-up-on-the-fly social glues will become (as you suggest) a shark tank, a hall of mirrors, everyone doing what seems right in their own eyes; atomized, folks will make up their own "realities" (you do you; whatever works for you) and... at each other's throats. Kinda like... now.
The Sabbatean-Frankists (for example) have spent *centuries* combatting that divine order, and we're now seeing a sort of 'singularity' of their results.
It's why here in Cambodia, no one is *depressed*. Everyone knows where they belong. Frankism hasn't taken root.
So, I suppose we need to combat the Frankists. A good start would be to use their real name.
I think it is easy to clarify the issue of transgender if you compare it to anorexia. No one "affirms" anorexic teenagers in their belief that they are too fat. Likewise no one should "affirm" a teenager that they are in the wrong body. Both lead to incredible physical harm and irreversible damage. It is time to start presenting it that way to those who call us bigots.
Absolutely! I’m so done with agreeing to disagree. It’s just wrong and NOT science! I refuse to go along. My 80 yo Aunt had adult anorexia. So bad that she’s damaged some organs, wears a heart monitor and was down to 70lbs at one time. She’s always been an exercise freak, coffee drinker, smoker and picked out the inside of her bagels. Never cared. Until 3 years ago she got so bad her husband had to call me and warn me she wasn’t well. That he’s sneaking her Ensure and trying to get her to see a therapist but she refuses. He then proceeds to tell me that if and when I speak to her I am not to mention her anorexia etc. So I’m to go along like all is well while her hair is falling out, she can barely walk and doesn’t eat because she feels like she’s fat. Going along with mental illness is not my thing. Oh and they are both deathly afraid of C-19, been jabbed, and refuse to see me bc I haven’t. Oh well :/. I’ve moved on to people/family that don’t need a reality check.
Good article, but the chart of true vs perceived proportion astounds me. It reveals that approximately 30% of the population is so stupid they don't have any basic reasoning skills and can't recognize reality. Unfortunately 30% is a large chunk of voters that can easily swing elections one way or the other. Perhaps that explains why politicians and media are deliberately misleading, over-representing, and dividing; so they can get that 30%.
Exactly…I give you “ furries”…. Some Public High Schools in Denver have placed Litter Boxes in their bathrooms so those little dumplings identifying as cats….. I refuse to keep typing ….
The/A problem is, for example, you can't vote for parts of The Democrat Party Platform, you have to accept it all, no matter what. And if you don't accept it all, you'll be forced to do it. Sort of your point regarding gay people and their representation in leather pants and chains and dog masks.
I hear Leftist voters say things like, "Well, ya, of course I don't think kids should be Trans'd!"
But those same Leftist voters then vote for pols and other evil people who have "Trans the kids" as part of their platform. Again, you don't get to pick and choose. It isn't an a la carte system.
Another example, they used Obama as the ultimate Trojan Horse. "Hope and Change!", ya sure. Lots of change, that's for certain.
yes. political parties competing for an imperial presidency will always tend to devolve this way.
they efface cross cutting cleavages where you and i may agree about X but disagree about Y and become monolithic. it's a manner in which political scientists measure the extend of a divided society.
this is true for the left and right in equal amounts. One of the main reasons I stopped voting altogether. While I agree with some points of my would be preferred party I disagree with 2x as many so I am not willing to vote a package because some talking points I like. But the tribe mentality leads here and people are blindly voting for a huge package (all package leads to WEF tyranny right now anyway...)
I have a coworker. He’s a very liberal guy. Is into pronouns. Doesn’t use the “R” word, loves Kamala, hates The Right. So recently he allowed his college aged kid to host some of his friends over for a get together. He’s finally over Covid to allow people in his house without having them have to take tests first. So he’s chatting with his kids friends, and discovers that over half of them use They pronouns. He’s thinking WTF does “they” mean? How can you be a “They”? The whole non-binary thing threw him for a loop, which I found hysterical since he’s so “progressive” overall. He didn’t get it, but the point of this post is that over half of his college aged kids friends we non-binary. This is how this generation was raised and taught in school. It’s everywhere in the sub 25 year old demographic.
I think we are so horrified by the globalist cult aspects of this and its capture of institutions, (which, as Gato says, we may perceive to be more comprehensive than it is), that we forget that kids totally flow with the fashions in an innocent sort of way (which can be used to corrupt and brainwash them), but, that at one level, this is typical of adolescence. Maybe we conflate typical adolescent behavior with the totalitarian global movements when we shouldn't? I just remember being really righteous about 'Ms.," correcting people who called me "Miss," and also, hilariously, being in a rest room in a drive-in movie on vacation in Texas and reading the toilet stall walls, and finding what I thought was the most glamorous spelling of my name I had ever seen, "CynDee," and starting then, at 12, to insist everyone spell it that way. How incredbily embarrassing to have ever been this dumb and young. Many many dumb and young things for many years after. We need to let kids go through these phases somehow without them getting swept up in totalitarian cyclones it seems to me. Now it is nonbinary, for my generation, it was androgyny---we all wanted both to be David Bowie and to have him for our own.
You're right about teens going along with latest fads etc, however this is the first time it's a) been coaxed, encouraged and normalised by some of the adults in their lives, and b) can result in disastrous and irreversible medical interventions. It's anything but a harmless fad.
Thinking his son and friends are a bit of misfits (probably emotionally or mentally unwell) desperately seeking attention and the weird “inclusion” of this crazy movement.
I know this sounds trite, but this was a great post - I strongly agreed with just about everything you said.
I especially liked the “bugs in a jar” metaphor. Most of us look around and see all of these profound, detrimental, social changes, and wonder: Who did this? . . . How do we get things back to a reasonable semblance of normal? . . . What happens if we don’t?
The scariest thing about history is how small, determined, groups have been able to dominate much larger majorities, for long periods.
Apparently the Olympic boxer is not "trans" in the way it is currently understood. She probably is XY, and has a mutation that stops her from turning her testosterone into the stronger androgen that leads to males sexual development. She may have internal male genitalia that never developed, or didn't start to develop til puberty. Heller parents and may have not even realized she had a chromosomal mutation until puberty.
So if she was socialized since birth as a girl, I'm happy to call her "she" and consider her a "woman ". However, this doesn't mean she should be competing against girls in boxing. But the point is that we shouldn't refer to this as a "trans" issue, because it is really very different in at least some respects to someone like Lia Thomas, for instance.
There is a real moral conundrum re intersex athletes. Brought up as women (logically, if we're talking about sports, it doesn't apply the other way round), excelling in their sport - then realising via blood tests that you are an anomaly? It must be appalling.
The whole argument really got going with Caster Semanya. No good answers have been found as there aren't any which are fair to everyone. Most definitely, though, an intersex person should *not* be boxing against a woman! I honestly don't know how anyone can argue that people's feelings trump the risk of actual brain damage!
It was then conflated with the trans issue, which muddied the waters even further.
Apart from this slight confusion, I am truly grateful to the bad cat for such a good article, which is very much in line with my views.
If all those lovely trans and homosexuals (sorry, the word "gay" means something else) are so horrified about what is being done in their name, why don't they speak out? Sorry, but when these people become visible in large numbers, it means a society is on the downward path.
it is the "wheel of rights". When the rights are expanding the wheel is going in the "right" direction. If a minority gets his/her rights lost means the wheel of rights has turned direction and who knows where it will stop. So anyone who enjoys the expansion of rights will never talk against the "wheel of rights" because it is dangerous to change the wheel's momentum.
Perhaps that's partly because of the substantial social stigma that still attaches to them. Also, transsexuals (transgendered people who attempt transition) are mainly concerned to fit smoothly into the gender category they identify with, which is the opposite sex. To identify publicly as "trans" would be to blow themselves out of the water.
The people acting out in public as "trans," physically-male athletes beating up on the girls, grievance-mongers, people who claim that their operation status is no one else's business, are not necessarily transgendered at all, much less transsexual. But they have become the public face of "trans" because the real trans people generally don't want to flag themselves as such. If you're transitioning, then calling yourself trans ruins that, and if you're not, then there's no point in taking on the stigma of calling yourself trans. Either way, they may speak out, but can't claim the flag of "trans" when doing so.
TLDR: 1. The Progressive movement means just what it says. Progress needs to be continual, liners if it must, non linear if it can. Because if they stop, the 98% will have time to realize and understand that they are all full of shit. 2. It all began with “we just want to get married and have the same rights as you”.
Agreed Moody. Everyone always had the same rights and the same restrictions when it came to marriage. Men could marry women and women could marry men. And everyone had the same restrictions. You couldn’t marry your mother or father, your brother or sister or cousin or your dog or cat. There was no distinction made between heterosexuals and homosexuals.
the question remains, who is purposely shaking the jar and how do we relieve them of their power to control the conversation.
i think it's a nasty combo.
some of it is just an emergent property of social and interactive media.
some of it is academics seeking to play status games.
some of it is politicians seeking power and patronage and the whims of whomever is buying them right now.
some of it is foreign interference and psy-op.
lots of people and and lots of systems have incentives (or emergent tendencies) to act badly here. it's almost impossible to peel it apart and find a "source" to shut off.
i think the best plan is to realize the phenomenon and its roots in perception bias and to seek to deny it purchase and to turn on those who stir this pot in each individual instance and to shrove back against it so they it becomes a cost and not a benefit for them.
It's programming. Decades of it.
I think it's root cause and why the racket is so "sticky" and pervasive is because it is both upstream and downstream, simultaneously, with politics/government.
A well greased looped conveyor belt of grift between the two.
"It's programming."
I'm pretty sure I've posted this here at least once, relevant again:
https://youtu.be/iiCQcEW98OY?si=usmaaygOJJCyX6qg
it IS programming, and once recognized as such, it cannot be unseen. it’s like exposing the great and powerful oz bustling about frantically behind the curtain. the truth is that he has no real power. each person has power, and many surrender it unwittingly to an illusion for a very long time.
100%. You speak truth
likewise
FZ: Always relevant.
Gold. Where’s that been in my life?
They’ve got the data now to make the theories of predictive behavioralism work like a Swiss watch. It’s live living in an ant farm.
I know you meant "like". And I like, but I am not able to like with Chrome. And too lazy to switch up to another browser.
I agree that media and entertainment messaging exaggerates the actual number of "trans" people, but you are wrong to think this was a confluence of different groups with bad intentions. This was a plan hatched by billionaire men with predilections who have been threatening and/or buying off media and academia for the past fifteen to twenty years, perhaps longer. Kinda like pharma. They want to disconnect human beings from our sexed reality in their dream of a transhumanist future. Children are their natural target. They're all part of the same cult. They are all deranged. We (humanity) have done what we usually do when these oddities arise. We ignored it thinking it would go away. But it hasn't gone away. It's only gotten worse. And, yes, it's finally gotten so bad that even the woke lovelies who just care soooo much are finally awakening to the risk.
"I recommend you read Jennifer Bilek's substack. She's also written a book on the subject.
https://jbilek.substack.com
Agree with this. I also have strong suspicions that jabs and meds and food (and other environmental pollution) are contributing to serious hormonal imbalances, especially in the young.
concur
Yes
So rarely I disagree with Gato. This time I do.
And I agree when he says:
we "keep elevating the craziest and most divisive and pretending they stand for anyone not just like us"
Yeah. To stop it, we must be able to call them out and force them out of the limelight.
Peer pressure and opprobrium works. But you gotta have the courage to call creepy antisocials creepy antisocials.
Spiteful mutants have taken over, and it won't end well.
Yes, I think it started in academia in the 1990's
PC
“Political Correctness” in the late 80s
That Mind/social cancer started there
I am curious though: at such low numbers, how do less than 1% (trannies) & 3% (gays) garner such status, power, victim claims? Why are politicians & corporations bending backward to enable? Certainly an even greater minority (I’d like to believe the majorities of those minorities want to be left alone like the rest of us) of factions of the LGBTQ+ alphabet people are disruptive & even damaging to family, traditional values, religion & shared culture but how do such truly minority groups wield such power over the majority?
Maybe they're all high IQ superheroes like the 2% Jews?
Maybe it's a triple-layer thing in both cases. A large, open society, in which lives a vulnerable minority that demands the right to exist and behave on their own terms. And within that vulnerable minority, a smaller, activist group that claims to represent and protect that minority from all the Anti's and Phobes out there that want to kill them. The vulnerable minority mostly goes along with its own activists, partly because of their protection and partly because they know the activists can destroy them individually if they object. The activists have to keep attacking the larger society to stay relevant, and the vulnerable minority eventually suffers the backlash.
like
And, like the C19 response - prayed upon people's tendency towards compassion and skewed it like a pretzel.
A lot of it is the puppets paid off to push the trans agenda. How many trans in the top gov’t jobs USA, same in France, same in Ireland…
Putting people under virtual martial law for a couple years helped ramp up this “fear of the other” tactic that works so well for the army kill machines. Falling into these traps won’t end well for anyone. You’ve really packed into one essay every reason why, in a lovely and kind manner.
This cuts through too ; brilliant commentary and then join Jennifer Bilek's research into the fray... Its fairly dystopian;https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RpeagcaBToU
"some of it is"
*The Hydra has entered the chat*
Divisiveness has always been an effective political tool. Divide and conquer works. There is lot to be gained stirring that pot in ways that create anger and hate.
There's also another aspect that make certain people vulnerable to division in an ironic way. Homosexuality has not always been accepted, or tolerated, in the west (and still is not in many places in the world). Humans are tribal, and have a desire to "belong". The irony is that joining groups is driven by a desire to come together, and that desire is often used to drive people apart. Just wanting to know you're not alone is natural human desire. Seeking supportive groups is healthy. But it also creates an opportunity for the oppressive to feed your fear of "going back" to when you could not "be you" overtly and without fear. Which is a natural fear, but also one that can be exploited and which can lead to being worse off than the past you fear!
Pretty sure it’s Marxist and Marxist-lineage academics brainwashing a critical mass of the elite into finding moral gratification from this (or at least getting used to shutting up and not fighting the DEI administrators and profs). Per James Lindsay.
So basically, to sum it all up, it's all an 'emergent property' of 'social interactions.' (IOW, basically shit happens.)
Cui Bono?
The same people, in their ivory towers with their "long view", that are pushing us against each other, not pulling us apart, to deflect from what we know to be true on the ground we stand upon, for their benefit...at our expense.
The battle line is manufactured to produce an ever widening chasm that further separates the ivory towers from the fault line.
The people I knew in academia didn't have a "long view", or at least not much of one. In the business world, I was always exposed to scenario planning. On a large complex engineering project you have contingency plans in case things don't go as planned - and they rarely do! You need to game out your propsed solutions and make sure it's robust, because failure can be financially fatal. Academics in the sciences seldom do this. They are not driven to get it right the first time. They see failures as learning opportunities, and they can do this because the research process, not the results are what's important. Liberal Arts academics have almost no long view. They seem to latch on to whatever unworkable theory is in vouge. If you try to game out the results of these theories, you find that they are either overly simplistic or outright stupid. Confront them with questions like "What happens if A occurs or if B occurs?" and they become agitated and angry when they can't answer. So how come I can come up with a question off the top of my head during a conversation about a social theory, and they, who are professional proponents of this idea, Ph.D.s, who should understand something about the implications and implementation of this theory, and beyond that, advocate it be forced on humanity, can't answer it? It's the equivalent of asking an engineer who advocates for 100% solar power "What do you do when the sun isn't shining?", and them not being able to answer the question.
Lol. I worked with fat-headed academics, who really believe because they wear a Ph.D. they are never wrong, and can’t be fooled. Many have also gone through the tenure system, which is created to disable critical thinking, and that grant fulfillment is their highest calling in service of the institution. They are greatly rewarded for having the results of corporate and foundation funding research reflect the desired outcome of the donor.
It’s a Marxist-Gnostic religion that *rewards moral inversion with status*.
It’s not a unique pattern and it’s the predictable end of turning moral critiques of society into one’s raison d’etre.
Yes, but it also puts no value on reason or truth. Their ideas are not just immoral, but impractical.
Yeah that’s the scary part. The goal is to reverse values. Reality and consequences are ignored.
Why did every western government, corporation and media all take up the trans mantle as the issue du jour at the exact same time?
Big pharma...Trans are lifetime subscribers. The whole purpose of the pharma industry as well as the medical industrial complex today is to keep you coming back. Not to improve your health. I bet there is a marketing team reaping bonus rewards for a job well done. Go pfeizer!!...mandate a vaccine that causes clots so you can keep your eliquis( anti clot) drug making you millions. So many examples out there....and all well coordinated due to the sponsors concerted efforts. They own everyone!! Luckily not Substack 😁
It took a couple decades, to be fair, with a big push on college campuses starting around 2015.
First turn of all msm including the Olympics. Boycott gb news, talkradio, any media that insists on carrying out the agendas for the incompetent politicians in office. Be honest, wouldn’t you rather listen to great music.
I have grown to realise that like most mainstream film is propaganda so a large portion of syndicated music is too. The cult of the person is a perfect tool to trap people and once invested into it they can be fed subtle lies.
The "Rich men north of Richmond" event illustrates it perfectly. The song was at the top of streaming for a while and has been removed from all controlled media. There is a place for music and while I am not a rap music fan the piece "Brainwashed" by Tom MacDonald should provide balance. His steps to control people in the song are credible. Until you are big enough you will be silenced if you are against the narrative.
Turning off all that since 2020.
I don't think Gato really gets this one. I see an international cabal pushing these agendas with the intention of causing divisions in the culture as they install the totalitarian New World Order.
I agree with this interpretation, though some of the factors that he lists are utilized.
It’s Obama and his cronies now in the Biden administration. Obama out race relations back 50 years.
Always the same group!
https://voza0db.substack.com/p/morons-just-dont-get-it-7d4
Well, fortunately that entire monetary system is about to burn, and I imagine all of the insanity will burn with it.
Dont bet on it. The insanity will be cbdc and total digital slavery. Surveillance from birth to death for those remaining.
"You want $100 to take that hot chick out? Delete your MAGA Tweet and you're good to go."
Hmmm...$100 AND a hot chick? One can see how they get traction...
🤣
It is interesting that soooooo many young people are living in some sort of denial world. Is it just easier to do this?
The problem with a CBDC is that the failure of the government-managed currency will fracture the faith in any government currency.
Nailed it. And it's coming.
These folks won't do so well in The Reaping.
There's the silver lining. And it may be the only way to take back our country.
I suspect cryptocurrency will become very important to our civilization’s survival in the very near future.
Every instance in the past where we debauch culture to the point of monetary collapse has resulted in hyperinflation. But never before have we had a legitimate alternative currency, so it will be interesting to watch it play out.
I very much am looking forward to the grievance-based government having to beg for their taxes.
Our systems are fully corrupted. The biggest problem humanity faces today is that we have lost all trust in our systems. Society cannot function without trustworthy systems.
To fix it we must build a new one that is much much harder to corrupt that is 100% controlled by the people, and we use it to hold the other corrupted systems accountable.
https://open.substack.com/pub/joshketry/p/dont-trust-verify-we-must-build-a?r=7oa9d&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
In the end we need to teach the kids what ever religion you want behind their parents back to make them stop. Help kids get baptized and see how that goes off at home.
Lucifer.
I am familiar with a few of trans-persons.
Your waitress may differ, but these three had significant emotional/mental health issues from childhood.
To regard them as "healthy" or "normal" is very much a mistake.
i suspect you are correct about the majority. it's predominantly a pathologically group that has come to prominence because society has been granting high status to the most performatively demanding/aggrieved. you can see it in the suicide rates, rates of depression, self-harm etc. it carries the markers of illness, not identity. the overall trans movement has become incredibly problematic and damaging.
but this is not universal and that's worth remembering too. there are cases of good people just trying to lead peaceful lives. i think, like many things, it needs to be case by case and approached with a bit of charity.
Not when they wre brainwashing our kids..I am a teacher I know 2 already who are transitioning in 5th grade and a high schooler who just committed suicide. It's done over the
Internet parents are oblivious or active participants. Why can't that internet chat rooms and websites be censored instead of the govt censoring anyone who speaks out with a different opinion?
It is a wholesale assault against these kids and parents are so busy working they can't monitor every damn minute. Someone in power is jamming this assault through...I know Larry Finks been pushing the DEI but who the hell is behind this assault? It's not a bottoms up thing..it's deliberate organized and financed...by powerful people.(see my comment below). We need to know who and why..this is not a natural social phenomenan...and i want to know 8f irs part and parcel of the tear it all down WEF...
LIKE
A very dear friend was trans, and she was tortured since childhood with the actual thing that is gender dysphoria. She finally went through months of therapy past middle age before any medical treatments were allowed, all she wanted were hormones. She just wanted to pass and live her life, not make any racket. She was exceptionally kind, brilliant, generous, talented, valued and much beloved by everyone with enough sense to not give a damn about the rest. Her emotional damage came from societal perceptions that she knew would have made her a reviled outcast if she’d said a word about her feelings. I’m glad she didn’t live to see the hideous spectacle that’s been made of the very few like her.
Used to go to gay bars, drag shoes in the 70’s, in Chicago. They were fun and the drag queens primarily kind, decent people. Have to admit, living in Devon england and mixing with mostly elderly straight people, Iife is a bit different.
"but this is not universal"
Something something extrapolating from incomplete data.
💯!!!
They attack us. That's war, against us, what is going on.
What happened at the olympics is part of this war.
"In your face, all the time."
And you are counseling us to be "decent" in the face of this onslaught???!!!
Different background.
Asians tend to internalize and show empathy. I can give countless examples and am sharing from SE Asia now.
Honestly, the Peruvians have the right of it, by refusing to acknowledge "Trans" as anything but mental illness. One of the most revolting things in the Trans manifesto (besides the obvious) is their demand to have control of the language. Once you're using stupid terms like "Cis" or "Genderfluid", you've already conceded defeat.
It's important to step back and remember the Marxist Left's playbook. They recognize that language is a weapon. Since many of them are overly educated Grievance Studies majors, they're well versed in the art of language corruption.
The only way to respond to their demands is with Rejection, with a side helping of Public Ridicule.
Please go back and read the piece again. The spectacle is not the people. It never ever is. Don’t be cruel.
👏👏👏
I tend to agree with you about "Genderfluid," but "Cis" is actually a useful term that just means "normal, not Trans." It's like the "Hetero" counter-term to "Homo" when referring to sexual orientation.
It is a matter of keeping one's sickness to oneself and not flaunting it for praise and power.
Or forcing me to celebrate and praise it as well.
That falls under my umbrella there.
Nail on head
Consider this analogy: we can all probably think of an obese person who eats what they want, barely exercises, but is in generally good health, and perhaps might even live into their 80's and 90's. That doesn't mean that obesity should be promoted as a "lifestyle choice", with state-mandated "body positivity" training. It looks ludicrous at first glance, because it is. No doctor in his right mind, who wanted to keep his license, would prescribe six Big Macs a day under the guise of "body type confirming care". Nobody looks at a Wal-Mart filled with gasping, heaving blobs on Rascal scooters and thinks "this is healthy".
The trans movement, and its relationship to identity and mental health, is no different. In the "yeah but" game, you can probably find a perfectly adjusted trans person calmly living their live and contributing positively to society. For every one of those, I'll effortlessly find you a hundred purple-haired screeching maniacs who were never popular in school, couldn't get their daddy to pay attention to them, or have a bedroom wall filled with participation trophies. A mentally healthy trans person is a statistically radical outlier, like an obese professional athlete, or a deaf concert pianist. It's not impossible, but nobody starts their child on a path to Carnagie Hall by whipping out a scalpel and lopping off the ol' ears.
Yes. They often are damaged or even autistic but still encouraged and counseled to go for it. I now know the therapists, psychologists and such are totally in on making sure transitions happen. It is evil child sacrifice.
I agree.
Absolutely. In abnormal psych, I learned the DSM 4 and earlier called it Gender Identity Disorder. Don’t know if they completely erased it now. It was a rigorously diagnosable disorder, not a flavor of the day.
Excellent piece, Gato, but here's the problem: "Tolerance" is what got us to where we are today. Any fellow X'ers out there have witnessed the victim-scam's lifecycle: Protect -> Tolerance -> Celebrate -> Promote -> Mandatory Worship. If if anyone thinks that sounds a little over the top, scroll back up and look again at that photo collage of degeneracy, most of which was likely snapped during our State-Enforced Month of Pride-Worship.
The most baffling part of the Trans lunacy to me is: how the blazes did such a minuscule percentage of the population achieve total dominance over the prominent culture in less than five years? I absolutely hate sounding like a tinfoil-hat philosopher, but there's simply no way that happens without concerted effort and mountains of cash. One might think that Trans-Wokeness might be happy with what they've achieved, and rest on its rainbow throne to consolidate its gains. But it can't. Like you said, The Church of Victimhood must always move forward. Compromise is not in its nature. Get ready for July to be rechristened as "Bestiality and Pedophilia Month" in a few years. That garish flag will get a pawprint and a pacifier added to it.
And I have no idea how to fight it while preserving our classic Western values. There's no way to preserve some shred of decency without engaging in the tiring, pedantic game of "But Muh Freedoms! You're all Hitlers!" But fight it we must, because this simply isn't some kind of natural, cultural devolution. It's a movement: financed, coordinated, pushed down our throats with every breath. It's cultural Cancer, and it's a civilization killer.
i would frame that a bit differently.
"tolerance" is and must be the basis for a rights based society, free people, and a repubilc.
my right to speech must inherently entail tolerance of your right to speak as well even and especially when you say something with which i disagree.
you literally cannot have these things without tolerance and so one cannot draw the line there and say "no."
where the line must be drawn is "coercion" the difference between "accept me?" and "accept me!" (or else).
trans is the final form of the performative aggrievement pokemon. we called marginalization "status" and sought to elevate it thru CRT, DEI, gender theory etc. this ultimately selects for the very maddest and most marginal people with the greatest ability to make outlandish performative demands. that's trans.
they won the fight to be "more marginal than thou" by being more deranged and daring.
it's just this cycle:
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/the-global-let-them-eat-cake-moment
western values involve quite a lot of "live and let live." what broke them is letting actual crazy people make demands of everyone else in the name of some deluded notion of "equity."
it's putting the lunatics in charge of the asylum.
yeah, and, dare I say it, oftentimes the men (who want to be women) behave like the worst of men -- aggressive, competitive, obsessive, not really giving a sh!t about who they crush on their way to total victory and dominance.... like this boxer thing -- how perfectly the gender stereotypes matched that little display -- the woman, afraid, injured, in pain, quits, and cries in public. the "man," is like, "whatev's -- it's all fair to win, right? just a game?" and is proudly going on to beat on the next woman. "He" is going to use his advantages in order to win, naturally.
Can’t help but wonder if those “Olympic” boxers & their deplorable “wins” could turn the tide on this insanity. Re the excuses that they were assigned female sex @ birth but have those pesky XY chromes, I don’t buy it for a minute: I’d like to see them have to pull down their boxing shorts & prove it
they are male all the way, regardless of what “parts” are visible. And they know it, and the IOC knows it, and their coaches and countries know it — but they want the Gold Medal. They win easily without any skill and are not doubt “holding back” the same way Lia Thomas did.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this (too much, really) and I’m thinking that the Olympic committee thinks like this: “Algeria says this is a woman. If we argue with them, they’ll get mad, claim racism, etc. etc, maybe even riot and or god knows what else. You know how it goes. And who cares about boxing anyway?”
Still want to see them “pants’d” for all to see
So they can’t claim “assigned female” @ birth but w/ XY & high testosterone
The final form is pedophile and it is lurking in the wings while they try to prime us to accept it.
agree
100%. Our satanic masters want to be able to pick any kid out anytime they want and have sex with them on the street.
And you know something? It will only make them bored afterwards. we will be giving up all our rights and children suffer, and the rich will get bored with it within minutes. God knows what will come up with after that?
I think that tolerance only works when schooling is optional, at least insofar as where families choose to get it. As far as I'm concerned, that's the whole game. If all schooling were up to the choices of the parents, the culture wars STOP MATTERING and we can all go back to tolerating each other's adult choices. If another adult gets to choose what my children are learning, I have to make sure that at least a minimum subset of behaviors are absolutely unacceptable in open society, because that's the only way to keep them from being taught as *positive* in schools by teachers that I don't get opportunity to reject.
I think that tolerance only becomes relevant if we live in an open society of the Karl Popper kind, and that at present most Westerners don't have that privilege. The question before most of us now is do we continue to tolerate our remaining freedoms being stripped away or do we get to the point where we cease to tolerate what is bound to eventually become intolerable to us.
I agree for sure, but the thing is when we started tolerating anything that adults did with each other. That’s when it started. that’s when this whole perversion got worse and worse and worse until we are letting children become victims. Innocent children.
When is enough gonna be enough?
Great summery. Completely agree.
Or is what we're seeing the inevitable consequence of liberalism and atheism/materialism (or the Enlightenment) taken to its logical conclusion. Many properties, when taken too far, do not get further from their opposite but (eventually) come full circle and turn into their opposite. If you take tolerance too far, it becomes intolerance. If we are free to be whatever we want, If we are each our own little gods, able to create ourselves as we see fit, then our limitless freedom comes full circle and becomes tyranny. Inevitably. The only thing that prevented it from happening to this degree in the past is that the vast majority of people had a shared myth--and I don't mean myth in the modern pejorative sense of that word but in the sense of a shared metaphysical truth underlying reality. Now, embarrassed by our own myth, we devolve into chaos. Nietzsche predicted this.
I think this is behind people like Bill Maher, Richard Dawkins, Joe Rogan, Jordan Petersen, etc. coming out in support in varying degrees of cultural Judeo-Christian morality. Dawkins in particular seems to be seeing the repercussions of tearing down the framework for social norms and morality and what creeps in and takes up that void. He tends to want to point to Islam mostly and avoids nihilism and postmodernism and the end outcome Nietzche predicted.
“It's cultural Cancer, and it's a civilization killer.”
Maybe that’s the point?
Perzactly
I think I read that there are a few very very rich trans men paying for all this propaganda. It was in Helen Joyce's book, "Trans." Great book. She was/is a writer for the Economist for many years.
Peter, I would say your comment is even more excellent than Gato’s piece. He makes many solid points, but your point about where tolerance has led trumps them, in my opinion.
And I *know* I sound like a crotchety old white guy on the front porch, complaining about the kids and their music and why-don't-they-pull-up-their-pants. But the sad truth is that naive Tolerance is what led us here. There's an old figure of speech once used to denigrate liberals: to be so open-minded that your brain falls out. That's America 2024.
That’s the plan - kill western civilization.
One tricky part is that we’re constantly being forced into the dichotomy. There’s no option “C” when confronted with a depressed and flabby androgyne teenager with man boobs insisting on being called “she/her.” This is how they shake the jar. We can all acknowledge that the jar shakers are the problem, but we’re still in the jar.
As for the income perception, you’re right on, but I think it’s trebly compounded by the very real pain that people with even low 6figure incomes are feeling, trying to maintain a household.
i would actually invert that idea somewhat.
i think high inflation and massive competition from waves of immigration is colliding with the high prevalence of 2 income households to make life much more difficult and expensive, especially for the young and single earners.
the perception of this difficulty and the relative position that people think they inhabit makes their sense of this far worse. 80th percentile earners feel like 40th percentile because their perceptions are so skewed by instagram and even those who realize they are high earners wind up competing for thinks like homes against couple who are both high earners and thus still wind up priced out of tight markets where it's difficult to add supply to meet demand. then you get barraged with videos of 22 year olds on private jets.
people perceive well being and status in relative and not absolute terms. it's just how humans are wired and the global reach of the social media comparator set turns this into something truly oppressive. it's not longer enough to be the rich guy or the pretty girl or the top athlete in your town. you're competing for eyeballs with the prettiest and richest and most athletic in the world and it's brutal out there. you wind up sad not to be a kardashian rather than realizing how exceptional you are.
Would someone please explain the Kardashians! How in the world did this family of circus sideshows gain such a following?
I am listening to “Cue the Sun” by Emily Nussbaum that traces the evolution of reality entertainment from 1930s radio to present day cable and streaming. In her account, reality shows such as Kardashians and the Real Housewives became hits in the aftermath of 2008’s financial meltdown. The head of Bravo tv deliberately programmed shows flaunting lifestyles of the rich, soon to be famous, to appeal to those who she called “affluencers.” Flaunting wealth begat more flaunting, more envy, and more despair, in my view.
Thank you, Anne. I agree with your view.
And fomo
I’ve thought since the very beginning the Kardashians were a media created psy-op to distort how the wealthy became wealthy and how they lived their lives. It was the creation of the ultimate straw man view to mock wealth afforded by capitalism. Making the wealthy seem as entitled, lazy, lucky, and loathsome as the worst stereotypes suggested.
How did Elizabethans start wearing idiot fashions like ruffs? Why did upper-class English and American women of centuries previous to ours wear idiot fashions like hoop skirts and bustles? Imagine if there were streaming services back then.
Elizabethans and English and American women of centuries ago were living in temperate climates during the Little Ice Age, without foam insulation or fossil-fuel powered heating. I wonder how well ruffs and hoop skirts work for retaining body warmth in frigid homes?
Hoop skirts? Lousy.
Ruffs? A nice little woolen neckwarmer would be much more comfy.
There was no practical reason for those abominations of adornment. They were just following the leader and the leading fashion plate was an idiot.
I wouldn't know; I've never worn either.
Still, I would think there would be room for a few undergarments under a hoop skirt. And I have the impression that SCA ladies in medieval and Tudor garb tend to suffer from the heat at summertime camping events.
I see how that has played out for me, personally, in the early days of starting my business. Every time I would hit a milestone that was beyond my greatest dreams of just a year ago, I would immediately feel like I was failing, because it wasn't twice that.
The perception that it's only hard for some of us, while there's some enormous District One full of people lolling about on yachts, definitely leads to very bad decisions in the social sphere. If more people understood that the greater DC area is one of the fastest-growing, and highest-concentration areas of massive wealth, we might actually make some progress. They want to eat the wrong rich.
this is a longstanding human phenomenon.
"there's no such thing as rich, just relative poverty."
every new peak one attains just gives them a view of the next one above and you just start comparing yourself to something higher.
Inverting the question "where does poverty come from?" to "where does wealth come from?" appears to be an extremely effective koan. When one understands that absolute poverty is the default state, one is less likely to take the unimaginable comforts of our current situation for granted.
However, most people don't understand what inflation is, and does. It doesn't just contribute to the natural anxiety of future uncertainty - it creates certainty that the future, materially-speaking, is being stolen. Recognizing that and dealing with it as a fact of life akin to mortality is a powerful means of gaining control over runaway neuroticism, but it's hard to get one's head around because it's not, technically, inevitable. Just baked into human nature.
"Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as "bad luck."
- Robert Heinlein
I’m not sure it has anything to do with instagram. People see other people buying houses and cars that are exorbitantly priced and say out loud “How the hell can anyone afford that!” That phrase is the mantra of our time and I hear it over and over from all kinds of people. People of all incomes and ages and demographics. And I indeed, how the hell are people buying houses that cost this much?
When consumer debt became a way of life for everyone, those signals started being erroneous, and a lot of people don't realize that. Some of the most stressed-out cash-strapped people I have known have lived lives full of material trappings, but they were a breath from bankruptcy at every moment.
It’s called buying on credit. My son (29) & his wife just built a modest home (3 bed / 2 bath but only 1400 sf) even though they could have afforded at least somewhat more. They have watched their friends max out credit to the hilt w/ fancy homes, cars, swank vacations & luxury goods they don’t need, & they want no part of it. Not sure if it’s nature or nurture but I’m grateful he at least has a common sense head.
For what it's worth, I've observed rather a lot of people "buy" homes that are far above what they could reasonably afford. After a period of time and given their likelihood to overspend on other things as well, they would end up in debt up to their eyeballs and in a lot of cases, eventually would get foreclosed on their homes, lose their big boats and cars, etc. and perhaps file for bankruptcy. They could keep things up for a period of time, and then everything would collapse.
Exactly...I'm good-looking, but not compared to the filtered Instagram people. Luckily I live in a forest with my dogs and cats. They don't see Instagram and still think I'm pretty special. 🤣
Speaking of eyeballs, el gato malo, I was asked to explain a piece by Holman Jenkins this week in the WSJ about the NBA kerfuffle when they went with Amazon and spurned Warner’s. It discussed that the era of streaming offering a huge choice of high quality shows and movies virtually ad free is coming to a close, because the only way to keep growing profits is…selling ads. It’s our eyeballs that are the product—as we have learned before.
Option C is a good right hook.
When I was born, real middle-class men with sensible shoes and valued reputations would step in to end confrontations with the threat or delivery of a punch in the mouth. Women in safe public spaces who found a stranger’s hand on their bottom would regift a sharp slap across the cad’s mouth. Yes, this happened, no it wasn’t like gang violence, yes, the crowd around would support the exchange and other people might join in, yes the perpetrator usually gave up quickly and apologized and yes I saw all this with my own eyes.
There is a viral video right now of a recent college grad suburban white dude stealing the duckbill cap Deon the head of an overbuilt hulk like gym owner. The owner slaps him and physically retrieves his hat. “Actually?” The totally befuddled dude asks. Yes. Actually. The copter mom idea that you either rely on the state to police every interaction no matter how minor or simply surrender to every social disruptor is part of a well studied totalitarian technique.
Just curious, gato, whether you would use “preferred pronouns” for every trans person you meet. I like that it’s not an absolute, and you refer easily to your waitress as “she,” however, I find that the militancy behind “use the right pronoun or else” to be deeply offensive and an attempt to break down my own sense of reality and the world around me. I draw the line of respect for others identity at the point it tears at my own.
no, i would not. i really dislike "pronoun demands." in fact, i actively resist such ideas and detest the inclusion of "pronouns in signature block" on emails, especially for those listing the pronouns that they were born into as some sort of "alliance."
i find it oppressive, obnoxious, and a sort of douchey virtue signal or flex.
i struggle to imagine a situation in which i would call someone "zey/zem" or some such as i find the whole thing self-indulgent and pathological. but, and this is a meaningful but, in the example of the waitress i mentioned, she has never asked me for anything. there was no demand, just a peaceful person living a calm life. i see no reason she cannot nor any reason to fail to be friendly and accommodative within reasonable bounds.
if it turned out such a person had male genitalia and wanted to shower in a locker room with girls, my view on accommodation would change. it's really about the ask and whether it's reasonable or intrusive. these issues can be very difficult to create hard and fast rules around.
consider a really simple example: beach towels.
you're at the beach laying on your towel. a stranger arrives and lays down their towel. there is some distance away where this is perfectly acceptable, polite, and reasonable. but if they came and laid it one millimeter from yours then laid down, nearly everyone would find that obnoxious and intrusive to the point of threat.
so where is the line? how far away starts to be OK? can there be any real objective standard? it's sort of a nested "it depends" that has many different axes that come together to determine such a thing.
there's never going to be a hard and fast answer and such answers as exist tend to be highly situational. an awful lot of social tolerance and acceptance works like this. it's sort of a morass of nuance and case based situational determinants.
more than anything, i think it's the people demanding hard and fast rules that are causing the problem. "you must comply with my demand or it's hate speech" is a form of assault. it take from you your right to self determination and forces you to speak and act as others demand. that is not basis for civilization.
"you must comply with my demand or it's hate speech"
Tolerating this, over decades, is exactly how we slid into the slim of the pit.
yes, it is and this post modernist game of punch no punchbacks is in the process of ending.
and not a moment too soon.
Agreed there has been a shift in the zeitgeist...even amongst my left leaning friends.
The assault on children being the final straw.
I have hope.
I hope so, but am not so sure.
Today I overheard my 19 and 24 year old girls discussing the Olympic boxing fiasco. I was shocked to hear them both say that Angela Carini was just a cry baby and that didn't she expect to get punched hard in the Olympics. She is such a cry baby that she quit after 46 seconds!
I was so upset I didn't know what to say, especially since I wasn't part of the conversation in the first place, and I walked away. I haven't figured out what to say to them that will penetrate their belief system.
With due respect, I wonder if your girls' problem is not their belief system, but their lack thereof? I think that's the real problem with most people who embrace whatever dumbshit fad happens to be the latest thing. The think their beliefs don't need to have the organic unity and consistency of a system, but are to be tailored freely and opportunistically in accordance with perceived social advantage (virtue-signaling instead of real virtue).
What you say might be technically correct. However, I was simply trying to express that they weren't going to listen to me as they have made up their minds. Recently I have come to realize that they care deeply about trans-rights, so much so that they won't discuss any different viewpoints. They have been brainwashed and are too young to realize this.
Before trans ideology became a thing, women might have quietly tolerated the (very?)occasional non-aggressive trans "woman" in a public restroom because they understood the peril a trans "woman" might face in a public men's restroom. Now that everyone has been coerced into accepting biological men in women's spaces, trans "women" like your waitress AND women are ultimately less protected.
The old school transexuals didnt have dicks. The medical protocol was 2 years of hormones and living "as a woman," then "sex change" operation (surgery to remove genitals and use penis skin to line the pseudo vagina and fake vulva fashioned from scrotal skin.). The overwhelming majority of transexuals were homosexuals, attracted to men.
The majority of today's "transgender women" are male heterosexuals, most of keep their dicks because they are fetishists or paraphiliacs. They objected to the transexual medical protocol as "gatekeeping." Autogynephilia is very common among billionaires.
AND they are identity thieves, claiming to be lesbians and calling female homosexual women (the real lesbians) bigots for not wanting to perform fellatio on them. BTW: contrary to how lesbians are portrayed in porn, in Real Life lesbians do NOT have sex with men.
Exactly. The 'hard and fast' rules are the reason that men are serving time in women's prisons. The rule-makers don't seem to understand that a certain segment of society will game the rules for their own gain.
But don’t we only use he or she when talking to a third person about that he or she - often when the he or she isn’t there to hear his or her pronouns? In the presence of he or she don’t we either use the person’s name or nothing at all? For example ‘Hello there! Could I have a coffee, please? Thanks!’ Or ‘Hello Anne, could I have a coffee please? Thanks!’ It is very easy to avoid a person’s pronouns.
Aren't demands of compliance actual violence, according to their standard of "words are violence?"
"if it turned out such a person had male genitalia and wanted to shower in a locker room with girls, my view on accommodation would change" -- exactly. IOW, your view on tolerance would change. IOW, it's not actually about tolerance, per se, at all. It's always actually about the substantive question of the good, and in relation to *that* and as a function of *that* -- i.e., a substantive vision of the Good (not some arbitrarily truncated libertarian vision thereof) -- what should be tolerated and what should not. Tolerance is no more a good thing per se than discrimination is a bad thing per se. "I'm good b/c I'm tolerant and you're bad b/c you discriminate" is utterly hypocritical virtue-signaling bullshit, always, whoever is saying it.
It's a free country (just about), so they have the right to pretend whatever they want. However, they don't have the right to make us share their mental illness, and above all, they don't have to right to push their crap on to our kids. A trans "woman" is, for me, a man dressed in woman's clothes and always will be. And I don't give a damn how offended they are. The shit has got to stop.
I think what he's saying is it should not be tolerated when the imposition itself is the point.
If that's not the case...then live and let live.
But, indeed folks like us have been forced into rock and a hard stone trying to manage a mentality of live and let live and leave me the eff alone.
I've said it before:
If the later is not the case than the former only makes the later worse.
You hit the nail on the head. I don't have an issue with using someone's preferred pronouns as long as they give me grace when I make a mistake based on a five o'clock shadow and adam's apple. I resent it being pushed on children and I resent being viewed as evil for resenting it. As a tomboy from birth, gifted with brothers, sons and mostly male friends, I could easily have been gaslit into thinking I was a boy as a 6 year old. That scares the hell out of me for all of the tomboys out there, some of who ended up being merely gay and many of us ended up becoming strong straight women. I resent the laws around facilitating teachers being in "secret societies" with children as they undermine parental relationships and their ability to inculcate their own culture in their kids.
Thank you for making this so clear!
Re. "...civilization... we used to have this..." We're hardly the first to collapse. The question few seem to be asking is: what *ought* to be the basis of our commonality? Niceness? Civility? Live-and-let-live? "Tolerance"? (hot tip: we tried that; it failed big) Rodney Kingism (1991: "can't we all just get along?") Not-shaking-the-jarism?
The Bible says (in 2nd Thessalonians 2) that when people reject the Truth (capital T intentional; John 14:6; Jesus) and take pleasure in things which do not conform to God's created order or moral law, He will send them a "strong delusion" so that their so-called civilization-on-their-own-terms, by their own standards, with their own made-up-on-the-fly social glues will become (as you suggest) a shark tank, a hall of mirrors, everyone doing what seems right in their own eyes; atomized, folks will make up their own "realities" (you do you; whatever works for you) and... at each other's throats. Kinda like... now.
Logos is effectively how all societies form.
The Sabbatean-Frankists (for example) have spent *centuries* combatting that divine order, and we're now seeing a sort of 'singularity' of their results.
It's why here in Cambodia, no one is *depressed*. Everyone knows where they belong. Frankism hasn't taken root.
So, I suppose we need to combat the Frankists. A good start would be to use their real name.
I just learned something. Thank you.
I think it is easy to clarify the issue of transgender if you compare it to anorexia. No one "affirms" anorexic teenagers in their belief that they are too fat. Likewise no one should "affirm" a teenager that they are in the wrong body. Both lead to incredible physical harm and irreversible damage. It is time to start presenting it that way to those who call us bigots.
I could not possibly agree more strongly with this. It's a point that needs to be made 100x as often as it is.
Absolutely! I’m so done with agreeing to disagree. It’s just wrong and NOT science! I refuse to go along. My 80 yo Aunt had adult anorexia. So bad that she’s damaged some organs, wears a heart monitor and was down to 70lbs at one time. She’s always been an exercise freak, coffee drinker, smoker and picked out the inside of her bagels. Never cared. Until 3 years ago she got so bad her husband had to call me and warn me she wasn’t well. That he’s sneaking her Ensure and trying to get her to see a therapist but she refuses. He then proceeds to tell me that if and when I speak to her I am not to mention her anorexia etc. So I’m to go along like all is well while her hair is falling out, she can barely walk and doesn’t eat because she feels like she’s fat. Going along with mental illness is not my thing. Oh and they are both deathly afraid of C-19, been jabbed, and refuse to see me bc I haven’t. Oh well :/. I’ve moved on to people/family that don’t need a reality check.
I'm so very sorry.
Good article, but the chart of true vs perceived proportion astounds me. It reveals that approximately 30% of the population is so stupid they don't have any basic reasoning skills and can't recognize reality. Unfortunately 30% is a large chunk of voters that can easily swing elections one way or the other. Perhaps that explains why politicians and media are deliberately misleading, over-representing, and dividing; so they can get that 30%.
yes. i was left wondering if there is just some bad programming in humans that makes them think every small group is about 1/3 of the population.
if that's true, it's a serious behavioral economics issue ripe for exploitation.
Well telling children, despite their capabilities or aptitude, that they can be whatever they want to be is certainly fertile ground for exploitation.
How many parents actually believe this? A lot...so an entire industry, both vertical and horizontal, has emerged to cater to this misplaced belief.
Exactly…I give you “ furries”…. Some Public High Schools in Denver have placed Litter Boxes in their bathrooms so those little dumplings identifying as cats….. I refuse to keep typing ….
Uggh. They came for the father's first so they could destroy the family, therefore the children
Isn’t that about the % who still believe that voting will get us out of this?
The/A problem is, for example, you can't vote for parts of The Democrat Party Platform, you have to accept it all, no matter what. And if you don't accept it all, you'll be forced to do it. Sort of your point regarding gay people and their representation in leather pants and chains and dog masks.
I hear Leftist voters say things like, "Well, ya, of course I don't think kids should be Trans'd!"
But those same Leftist voters then vote for pols and other evil people who have "Trans the kids" as part of their platform. Again, you don't get to pick and choose. It isn't an a la carte system.
Another example, they used Obama as the ultimate Trojan Horse. "Hope and Change!", ya sure. Lots of change, that's for certain.
Society can't go on like this.
yes. political parties competing for an imperial presidency will always tend to devolve this way.
they efface cross cutting cleavages where you and i may agree about X but disagree about Y and become monolithic. it's a manner in which political scientists measure the extend of a divided society.
and we have very much become one.
it's a badly unhealthy state of affairs.
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/america-has-become-a-divided-society
this is true for the left and right in equal amounts. One of the main reasons I stopped voting altogether. While I agree with some points of my would be preferred party I disagree with 2x as many so I am not willing to vote a package because some talking points I like. But the tribe mentality leads here and people are blindly voting for a huge package (all package leads to WEF tyranny right now anyway...)
Absolutely agree. I saw through “hope and change” and voted accordingly. Unfortunately many Americans did not:(
The "fundamentally change America" part got my attention.
I have a coworker. He’s a very liberal guy. Is into pronouns. Doesn’t use the “R” word, loves Kamala, hates The Right. So recently he allowed his college aged kid to host some of his friends over for a get together. He’s finally over Covid to allow people in his house without having them have to take tests first. So he’s chatting with his kids friends, and discovers that over half of them use They pronouns. He’s thinking WTF does “they” mean? How can you be a “They”? The whole non-binary thing threw him for a loop, which I found hysterical since he’s so “progressive” overall. He didn’t get it, but the point of this post is that over half of his college aged kids friends we non-binary. This is how this generation was raised and taught in school. It’s everywhere in the sub 25 year old demographic.
Why is he so shocked? It's what he voted for.
I think we are so horrified by the globalist cult aspects of this and its capture of institutions, (which, as Gato says, we may perceive to be more comprehensive than it is), that we forget that kids totally flow with the fashions in an innocent sort of way (which can be used to corrupt and brainwash them), but, that at one level, this is typical of adolescence. Maybe we conflate typical adolescent behavior with the totalitarian global movements when we shouldn't? I just remember being really righteous about 'Ms.," correcting people who called me "Miss," and also, hilariously, being in a rest room in a drive-in movie on vacation in Texas and reading the toilet stall walls, and finding what I thought was the most glamorous spelling of my name I had ever seen, "CynDee," and starting then, at 12, to insist everyone spell it that way. How incredbily embarrassing to have ever been this dumb and young. Many many dumb and young things for many years after. We need to let kids go through these phases somehow without them getting swept up in totalitarian cyclones it seems to me. Now it is nonbinary, for my generation, it was androgyny---we all wanted both to be David Bowie and to have him for our own.
You're right about teens going along with latest fads etc, however this is the first time it's a) been coaxed, encouraged and normalised by some of the adults in their lives, and b) can result in disastrous and irreversible medical interventions. It's anything but a harmless fad.
Very thoughtful points. I sure remember some of the idiocies of my own youth and think "Yikes, what on earth was I thinking?"
For sure. And as someone who has steadfastly refused to grow up, my own youthful idiocies span nearly seven decades.
Reality is a very bitter pill.
I know lots of people like this.
Thinking his son and friends are a bit of misfits (probably emotionally or mentally unwell) desperately seeking attention and the weird “inclusion” of this crazy movement.
I know this sounds trite, but this was a great post - I strongly agreed with just about everything you said.
I especially liked the “bugs in a jar” metaphor. Most of us look around and see all of these profound, detrimental, social changes, and wonder: Who did this? . . . How do we get things back to a reasonable semblance of normal? . . . What happens if we don’t?
The scariest thing about history is how small, determined, groups have been able to dominate much larger majorities, for long periods.
Apparently the Olympic boxer is not "trans" in the way it is currently understood. She probably is XY, and has a mutation that stops her from turning her testosterone into the stronger androgen that leads to males sexual development. She may have internal male genitalia that never developed, or didn't start to develop til puberty. Heller parents and may have not even realized she had a chromosomal mutation until puberty.
So if she was socialized since birth as a girl, I'm happy to call her "she" and consider her a "woman ". However, this doesn't mean she should be competing against girls in boxing. But the point is that we shouldn't refer to this as a "trans" issue, because it is really very different in at least some respects to someone like Lia Thomas, for instance.
The difficulty is that in the current hysterical climate, it’s impossible to reason about the difference!
I was going to comment on just this.
There is a real moral conundrum re intersex athletes. Brought up as women (logically, if we're talking about sports, it doesn't apply the other way round), excelling in their sport - then realising via blood tests that you are an anomaly? It must be appalling.
The whole argument really got going with Caster Semanya. No good answers have been found as there aren't any which are fair to everyone. Most definitely, though, an intersex person should *not* be boxing against a woman! I honestly don't know how anyone can argue that people's feelings trump the risk of actual brain damage!
It was then conflated with the trans issue, which muddied the waters even further.
Apart from this slight confusion, I am truly grateful to the bad cat for such a good article, which is very much in line with my views.
He has internal testes.
If all those lovely trans and homosexuals (sorry, the word "gay" means something else) are so horrified about what is being done in their name, why don't they speak out? Sorry, but when these people become visible in large numbers, it means a society is on the downward path.
Same can be said for the women’s sports. Why are they participating?!? If they all walked away the issue would be over!
it is the "wheel of rights". When the rights are expanding the wheel is going in the "right" direction. If a minority gets his/her rights lost means the wheel of rights has turned direction and who knows where it will stop. So anyone who enjoys the expansion of rights will never talk against the "wheel of rights" because it is dangerous to change the wheel's momentum.
And sadly, women's rights are being trampled by trans rights. The two cannot co-exist.
My instinct is to agree with you but actually what she did was much more effective at making the issue public.
If she walked away she would be labeled a bigoted transphobe, she got her face broken in 30 seconds and now she’s clearly the victim.
That's what I say too!
We do. Merrick Garland calls people who object to the Trans Agenda "domestic terrorists."
Perhaps that's partly because of the substantial social stigma that still attaches to them. Also, transsexuals (transgendered people who attempt transition) are mainly concerned to fit smoothly into the gender category they identify with, which is the opposite sex. To identify publicly as "trans" would be to blow themselves out of the water.
The people acting out in public as "trans," physically-male athletes beating up on the girls, grievance-mongers, people who claim that their operation status is no one else's business, are not necessarily transgendered at all, much less transsexual. But they have become the public face of "trans" because the real trans people generally don't want to flag themselves as such. If you're transitioning, then calling yourself trans ruins that, and if you're not, then there's no point in taking on the stigma of calling yourself trans. Either way, they may speak out, but can't claim the flag of "trans" when doing so.
TLDR: 1. The Progressive movement means just what it says. Progress needs to be continual, liners if it must, non linear if it can. Because if they stop, the 98% will have time to realize and understand that they are all full of shit. 2. It all began with “we just want to get married and have the same rights as you”.
It was a lie then. It remains a lie today.
Agreed Moody. Everyone always had the same rights and the same restrictions when it came to marriage. Men could marry women and women could marry men. And everyone had the same restrictions. You couldn’t marry your mother or father, your brother or sister or cousin or your dog or cat. There was no distinction made between heterosexuals and homosexuals.
"but they are also not by any means anything like a majority at least until high school when it gets close."
*blink blink* 45%?! Ho. Lee. Crap
Likely not unrelated:
When asked why he robbed banks, [Willie] Sutton simply replied, “Because that's where the money is.”