If you – like me – loathe authoritarian, faux-progressive scolds, it’s actually been a good few years. I know it might not seem like it, with the ‘Queers for Palestine’ contingent currently running riot on American university campuses, but hear me out. Across the Anglosphere, one politician after another, beloved by the media but increasingly disliked by the public, have exited the stage, often jumping before they were pushed.
This week, we bid farewell to the SNP’s Humza Yousaf, whose year-and-a-bit-long premiership in Scotland produced more scandals and disparaging nicknames – Humza Useless, Humza the Hapless, etc – than it did any positive legacy. In the end, he proved himself to be as illiberal as he was inept. His flagship policy, the Orwellian, broad-sweeping Hate Crime Act, alarmed voters and sparked a tsunami of spurious complaints, many of them about Yousaf himself. We can only hope it will now collapse under the weight of its own absurdity. (One thing’s for sure, voters are furious about it: only one in five Scots wants the Hate Crime Act to stay.)
Then, Humza managed to accidentally collapse his own government.
Continue reading @ Spiked.
Have clicked on link but getting 404 message. Really looking forward to reading it.
ReplyDeleteShould work now Barry
DeleteThe pendulum always swings back. The People have had enough of this woke bullshit and absolute stupidity of politicians who won't define what a woman is out of fear. Why oh why do we continually allow the mentally ill minority a huge amount of airtime and attention? If words hurt them then they should start wearing fucking helmets.
ReplyDeleteAnd why are sensible border controls such an issue? I'm all for legal migration and humanitarian responsibilities but letting everyone in without even a cursory check seems like utter madness to me.
And the article didn't mention that cunt Sturgeon is also as corrupt as they come, and she jumped ship before the ScoPol felt her collar after her dodgy husbands.
I think what is seeing them done for is the putting of rapists in women's prisons, the attempts to smear and censor anybody not sharing the view that men can be women, or vice versa, and the one you refer to - the squirming of politicians when asked to define a woman. The right wing US commentator. Matt Walsh, eviscerates them all on the last point.
DeleteThat said, I do not think it can be dismissed as a mental illness no more than being can can. The religious loved that one. But the science is very clear on it - there are two sexes - male and female. Then the intersex which is regarded as a natural genetic aberration. If we ignore the science then everything we have had confidence in - as distinct from faith - falls. There is nothing left to defend.
Every aberration is possible in nature and I'm certain that people genuinely believe they've been born into the wrong sex. However...that just doesn't change reality and mean I have to affirm that for them..
DeleteAnd the other side of of that coin is there's just plain fucking perverts who abuse the zeitgeist.
Under absolutely no circumstances should children be allowed to make life altering decisions when their brain isn't even fully developed until well into their 20s, and doctors who perform such " affirmation " actions need brought up in court. The pendulum is going to smack them fairly in the balls and very soon.
There are far too many in the psychiatric profession who believe it is not a mental illness. In fact they feel that the failure to address it can lead to mental illness.
DeleteOthers differ but the sheer bulk alone suggests we need to be wary of labelling it mental illness. People can be as uncomfortable in their body as gays are in a hetero relationship. And science has the ability to intervene.
Even if it is a psychiatric condition science can still feel that gender dysphoria treatment is the remedy.
The arguments are not novel. Those opposed to abortion have demanded that doctors who perform them be prosecuted. Calling for prosecutions seems to be a dark ages mindset.
While I still feel there are only 2 sexes, I see no reason for prohibiting transgender people. I have a very serious issue with supporters of that body trying to intimidate people out of holding a different view.
@ Steve R
ReplyDelete"Under absolutely no circumstances should children be allowed to make life altering decisions when their brain isn't even fully developed until well into their 20s, and doctors who perform such " affirmation " actions need brought up in court. The pendulum is going to smack them fairly in the balls and very soon."
I remember having a discussion with a friend and saying something about life changing decisions in early teens. He said, accurately that him, me, and plenty of others, were smoking, snorting, and swallowing all manner of drugs and embarking on dangerous paths in life. I can see his point, and yours, and AM's.
My own thoughts are that the vast, vast majority of people are one of two sexes, but that there are, and always has been, people for whom it is not that simple.
I also think that rebelling against the sex you are assigned at birth is probably very appealing for certain people in certain conditions for certain reasons, and that these people are not the statistically tiny group of people I mentioned above.
I also imagine that the latter group has greater number than the former.
But I really don't know. I (try to) keep an open mind. It's a deeply complex issue.
As for pronouns, I'd react like Axlerod to anyone asking me to use them: https://youtu.be/5mxwVYAB434?si=WROCJ4-GMPNY8ViS&t=25
Brandon,
Delete"I remember having a discussion with a friend and saying something about life changing decisions in early teens. He said, accurately that him, me, and plenty of others, were smoking, snorting, and swallowing all manner of drugs and embarking on dangerous paths in life"
Whilst true, all of those adventures of youth could be reversed/ceased with the vast majority of cases having resulted in little malady.
Not the case with puberty blockers or genital mutilation.
"Even if it is a psychiatric condition science can still feel that gender dysphoria treatment is the remedy."
ReplyDeleteYet it cannot change a person's sex no more than cutting the balls off a dog would make it a bitch. Some things in life are immutable.
I'm not interested in prohibiting someone who identifies as "trans". What I am saying is that I refuse to go along with their game. A large part of it smacks of narcissism and from personal experience I know of one child who's mother who was clearly a narcissist who has severely fucked up her child's life by insisting he is a she.
The father, the poor bastard, left the mother and is trying desperately to gain access through the courts to have even a 10 minute window per week with his son. But she's manipulated absolutely everyone around her including very nearly my own wife until I pointed out some salient truths.
But all the legality's pale into insignificance when I think of what the future holds for that boy.
In contrast my daughter had a friend when she was 6 who liked to wear girl clothes and play dress up, grew his hair long and everything. Got to know the parents who are absolutely lovely and level-headed. They didn't push anything. Kid grew out of it and is as boy as they come..full on into Aussie Rules football and rough and tumble.
I know this is only my experience but it's also why I am dead against medical mutilation disguised as 'treatments' for anyone who's not a compos mentis adult. We don't let kids get tattoos for fuck sake.
But it doesn't have to change the sex to be effective. If it works for the person treated. Nor do we have to recognise that a sex change has taken place. To the limited extent that I observe it, most people seem to identify the category as trans rather than man or woman. Nor do we have to go along with any game - no more than we have to go along with acknowledging people as gay. We just acknowledge them as trans.
DeleteWe don't let kids get tattoos but if a tattoo could prevent a child ending its own life because of misery, I doubt many of us would oppose the tattoo.
It's like much else for me Steve at this age. Even where things are hard to get my head around, with no dog in the fight I tend to let it float on by. If people do not agree with the Trans issue, fine. They should be allowed to express their view much as Jim Wells was allowed to explain his opposition to gayness or Pastor McConnell his opposition to Islam - both of whose right to a different opinion were defended in this blog. It is when hatred becomes the driving force that I have concerns.
If they'd identify separately as 'Trans' I'd have no real issue with it, save asking them to use a separate bathroom in public spaces. My problem is that a large part of those people want the rest of society to affirm what's in their head and play make believe, and if you dare say anything the wankeratti will vilify you. Screw that. It smells like the thin end of a wedge and I just don't know where it's trying to end up.
DeleteIn defending their freedom to have bodily autonomy - much as we do with women on the abortion issue - we can recognise that without the freedom to have cerebral autonomy, bodily autonomy is a myth. When a certain mindset insists that everybody must abandon their own powers of reasoning and state they believe something they clearly do not believe, to go along with that is an abdication of our own cerebral autonomy. This is why Enoch Burke has the right to believe what he does. The problem with him is that he thinks religion gives him that right. It does no such thing.
DeletePending class actions, and litigation by individuals who can afford it, against psychologists, medics, and pharma companies will eventually sort this.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to the trans argument, it’s important to specify what is being said because there are a multitude of issues that are grouped together under the trans umbrella.
ReplyDeleteIf we’re only talking about the treatment of trans people, I think everyone would agree that it is important they are treated equally and have the protection of the law. This is basic, humanitarian thinking.
Now let’s consider that there have been moves in recent years to broaden the scope of what it means to be trans. Traditionally, a person who was trans had some operations and lived as their preferred identity. Nowadays, you have people who identify as trans who have no intention of getting such operations (not to mention the school of thought regarding non-binary people). So, on a practical level, that has implications for women’s spaces as well as health services. But attempts to discuss this have resulted in a variety of shouting matches and worse.
This leads into another issue: trans is an identity, not a sexuality. The gay rights movement succeeded in challenging homophobia in society because it had a goal that could unite people regardless of class, colour, creed, gender or sexuality. Cultural/identitarian struggles fragment because there are differing objectives that are relatively obscure and lack the focus that political struggles give. This is why the phrase “trans rights are human rights” are repeated as a mantra, although what rights trans people don’t have depends on who you speak to.
Another issue linked to this is the rewriting of history. Over the last decade, there have been attempts by some academics to suggest that certain historical figures were either trans or non-binary (Joan of Arc being a recent example), leading to some archaeologists refusing to identify human remains as male or female. This has taken place, arguably, to suggest some centuries long struggle over a very recent phenomenon.
Factor in a heavily divided population, the narcissism of social media, the failure to understand Enlightenment values and our inability to see children as nothing more than blank slates for our hopes and fears and it becomes easy to see how the trans argument has blown up.
This is a brilliant, insightful, fair-minded overview of the situation.
DeleteLooks like the SNP have some stiff competition:
ReplyDelete"Rebel members have been kicked out of the Scottish Green Party for declaring that “sex is a biological reality”.
Signatories to the Scottish Green Declaration for Women’s Sex-Based Rights were accused of making the party less safe for trans and non-binary members in an official complaint.
Now several members have been expelled with immediate effect by the ruling Conduct and Complaints Committee (CCC). They include long-standing activists who have spent decades campaigning for Green politics."
https://www.holyrood.com/news/view,scottish-greens-expel-gender-rebels-deemed-threat-to-trans-members
It is the sort of behaviour that leads to male rapists being put in women's prisons.
DeleteAnd a hardening of attitudes among "gender critical" types, meaning that genuine trans people suffer the fallout.
DeleteThat's a good point Christopher, exactly what 'rights' are currently denied to those who identify as trans?
DeleteWhat are they so vocal about? They appear to be lauded and venerated all over the various media platforms, I'm curious what else they want.
According to a report I've just read, a Californian teacher who filed an action for dismissal on religious grounds has accepted an agreed settlement of $360,000 from her employers.
ReplyDeleteThe PE teacher had refused to accommodate trans students by using their preferred pronouns and allowing them to use facilities according to their gender identities. She also objected to the school's policy of not informing parents of their chosen gender identity and was subsequently dismissed.
While the district has approved payment of the settlement, it also issued a statement saying "it has not admitted fault or wrongdoing against Ms. Tapia".
It reminds me of the Enoch Burke case a bit. My objection to them is because of their view that their religious opinion privileges them or exempts them. It can have no more standing than a sporting opinion or say Steve's secular reasoning for not addressing them the way they insist on being addressed.
DeleteIf as we assume it to be, that it is a scientific fact that there are only two sexes, then it might be argued that science should have the privilege, not religion.
I don't like the idea that people should be compelled to call a man she or a woman he. 'They' seems to be a reasonable way around it in a workplace setting.
It seems paradoxical to insist that I have the right not to be referred to as he but you have no right not to be referred to as a bigot because you don't think of me the way I think you should think.
Yes AM, we're generally on the same page on this.
DeleteReligion and gender are both essentially identity issues. Neither ought to be privileged by legislation. At the same time, the right to choice and free expression should be unencumbered, except when the expression of such rights would lead to obvious harm to others.
In considering what constitutes harm, the words of Saigh Guru come to mind:
"We can become wounded, or we can become wise".