I have a few transgender people in y social circle. All of them did their transitions, for whatever reason, as adults. I treat them with respect. They (mostly) reciprocate – I’ve had no ugly little moments over pronouns.
Because that’s kinda the point – voluntary human interaction requires some degree of mutual respect, as opposed to using every interaction as an excuse to try to squeedge a publicly-airable grievance out onto social media – something that might be equally well-termed “narcissism”.
And some of the LGB crowd is seeing it the same way.
Gay black guy comments on videos of Trans people complaining about being “misgendered”:
And I think he nails it.
One of many highlights: “If you’ve been to 25 restaurants and everyone’s calling you “Sir’, there’s a theme and consensus“.
Of course, as Camille Paglia points out, it’s not all laughs and games:
In addition to football, we saw last week the annual “progressive” tradition of wrapping one’s self and others in un-earned victimhood.
It was “Trans Violence Awareness Week”, during which Leftis pols conjured up victims from the ether to rally the soft-minded to their cause.
Senator Smith, for starters (with a riposte from Shawh Holster)
She is describing a fiction. Show me a single kid murdered because they were trans. Of the 26 reported incidents, none were children. This is a fiction intended to evoke sympathy. Storytelling. pic.twitter.com/gHLOKZExg1
The only catch is that no such systemic violence exists. According to Jean-Pierre herself — and, presumably, to an LGBT-rights group with every interest in magnifying the phenomenon — the total number of trans-identified Americans known to have been killed in 2023 is 26. If we round that up to 30 (to account for December) and assume that just 1 percent of the U.S. population is trans (given that, as one very limited survey shows, around 3 percent of young Americans are), we obtain an annual transgender-murder rate of 30 in 3.32 million, or just 0.9 people per 100,000 people. Even if we, alternatively, assume an American trans population of just 1.6 million — to gel with one high-quality but conservative recent estimate — the resulting murder rate would be merely 1.9 per 100,000 people.
To put that in context, the murder rate for blacks in the U.S. is currently 30–33 per 100,000 people. The African-American community is an outlier but not necessarily a remarkable one: In a representative recent year, 4.5 percent of black-male deaths were the results of homicide, versus 2.3 percent for American Indians, 2.2 percent for Hispanics, 2 percent for Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders . . . and 4.9 percent for all whites under full majority. To say the obvious, all of these groups are currently living far more dangerously than “trans women.”
Holster ran down the HRC’s numbers in this twitter thread:
Long story short – like iron ore, Big Left wants to take the raw material of intra-relationship and street violence, and try to refine it into yet another social grievance to keep the ignorant and uncritical in a hot lather.
Not because of what he says. Mostly because he’s a podcaster whose podcast gets plopped onto radio with a little editing. It’s not necessarily great radio.
But radio purism aside, I watched “What is a Woman?” last week.
And the part that stuck with me, the part I didn’t already know?
Between hormones, surgery and other clinical charges, every single transition yields a total of $1.3 Million.
The return on investment has to be far better than Covid was.
With that in mind, I caught this the other day. It’s a thread – if you cllck into it, it should yield 5-6 related tweets:
An adolescent therapist came to me with borderline unbelievable stories to tell about how ≈ 90% of her caseload is now transgender-identifying kids.
“We are being told, ‘Don’t investigate what’s going on. Don’t find out if they have a comorbid personality disorder or if they… https://t.co/c4OpEAtvV0
Hot on the heels of the pummeling of Bud Light over choosing a transgender spokesminstrel, this ad campaign claiming the history of beer for feminism, has surfaced:
The worst part is what this says about women in America today.
Money Where Their Mouth Is: Advertisers are, in normal times, perhaps the ultimate practitioners of the free market. They, their campaigns, and their agencies and departments rise and fall on how successfully they gauge the sentiments of their audiences.
Good ad agencies, execs and campaigns “read” society correctly.
So – what are they reading?
Impressions: It’s not a big stretch – ads are aimed at the people who buy products.
And within families, households and communities, that varies by what’s being sold.
So think about products where the primary buy/don’t buy decision is men. Classic example – firearms. Ads for firearms portray men as sober, decisive, serious people. That’s how gun owners see themselves and their paths. An ad agency that portrayed their male customers as doughy comic relief would probably have a hard time getting their contract renewed, since the brand’s sales would probably tank. By the way – the women portrayed are also solid, serious people, as well.
Home improvement brands, like hardware stores, tend to take men fairly seriously as well
Beer? Well, the portrayal of men in beer ads is often tongue-in-cheek…:
…and the women portrayed with them tend to be – as the shrieking harpy in the Miller ad notes – somewhat idealized:
In a bikini? Sometimes. The purple middy top is close, in its own way.
But women are portrayed as idealized as a rule. Young, pretty, not stupid – it’s affectionate.
So – when the target audience is women, what then?
The point being, our ads tell us something about how advertisers (who get paid to get attitudes right) see how we see each other. And from the ads – and the crushing preponderance of them by volume – we learn:
Men, at least in the last 30-40 years, have affectionate respect for women, while celebrating attraction
Women think men are hopeless incompetents.
And this has been going on for well over a decade.
So is it any wonder the young fellas of GenZ are forsaking the mating game for video games and pr0n?
Democrats, especially the MN DFL, pine for European style “social democracy” – or at least the kind they’ve incorporated into their romantic interpretation of 1970s-style Swedish and Danish socialism.
Their teenage-girl-level keening is selective – they are quiet about the fact that Denmark, for example, has no minimum wage.
But for the most part, DFLers are figuratively pining for the fjords most of the time.
Will that change soon?
Minnesota just signed a law legalizing kidnapping kids and playing Mr. Potato Head with their body parts and endocrine system, while allowing unlicensed, unqualified paraprofessionals to conceal what’s going on from parents.
Or as they refer to it, “guaranteeing gender-affirming care”.
The United Kingdom, Sweden, Finland, and France have all taken steps recently to pull back on transgender medical treatments for seemingly gender-dysphoric children.
Sweden has been one of the most progressive nations on transgender health care for decades. Back in 1972, Sweden became the first country to allow transgender people to change their legal gender.
Last year though, Swedish hospitals halted the use of puberty blockers in five of the country’s six clinics for minors with gender dysphoria. The last clinic only uses puberty blockers in clinical trials. The country now emphasizes psychotherapy for minors with gender dysphoria instead.
The Karolinska Hospital in Sweden recently issued a new policy statement regarding treatment of gender-dysphoric minors. This policy, affecting Karolinska’s pediatric gender services at Astrid Lindgren Children’s Hospital (ALB), has ended the practice of prescribing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to gender-dysphoric patients under the age of 18.
This is a watershed moment, with one of world’s most renowned hospitals calling the “Dutch Protocol” experimental and discontinuing its routine use outside of research settings. According to the ”Dutch Protocol,” which has gained popularity in recent years, gender-dysphoric minors are treated with puberty blockers at age 12 (and in some interpretations, upon reaching Tanner stage 2 of puberty, which in girls can occur at age 8), and cross-sex hormones at the age of 16. This approach, also known as medical “affirmation,” has been endorsed by the WPATH ”Standards of Care 7” guideline.
Never thought I’d see sanity creeping across the Atlantic to the west, but then the whole world is pretty much upside down these days.
I was reliably informed that stories of teachers subverting parents will to “transition” or otherwise influence (but don’t you dare say “groom”) children were “paranoisa”, misinformation and right wing hate speech:
A family in New York has filed a lawsuit against the Brookhaven-Comsewogue School District, Terryville Road Elementary School, and 5th-grade teacher Debra Rosenquist because they allege that Rosenquist attempted to secretly transition the gender of their 10-year-old daughter without notifying the parents.
The student – who is identified as A.V. in the complaint – became confused as to her gender during the 2021-2022 school year because Rosenquist insisted on using a male name and male pronouns to refer to the student.
Weird. I’m reliably – and very angriliy – informed this can not be:
In October 2021, the teacher began to call A.V. by the name “Leo” and use he/him pronouns for the child. No one in the district informed the parents (referred to as L.N. and E.V. in the complaint) of these changes.
Several months later, in January 2022, the school’s principal informed the parents that the child had met with the school psychologist (without the parents’ knowledge) and had drawn a girl with the words “I wanna kill myself” and “I feel sad a lot.” The psychologist determined this was because A.V. was confused about her gender identity.
This was the first time A.V.’s parents had heard anything about the confusion regarding A.V.’s gender identity or new name and pronouns forced on the child by the teacher.
Here’s the entire complaint against the Suffolk County schools, over the episode…
Background: “Cultural appropriation” is one of the few sins actually recognized by the Wokemob. One can not, it seems, be white and wear african jewelry or cook mexican food, at the risk of inciting the Wokemob.
They seem to be more tolerant of people of non-Western descent using things invented in the west, like free speech and respect for the individual (as long as they are that individual), but let’s not get carried away in technicalities, here.
Foreground: The actress formerly known as Ellen Page – most famous for starring in Juno, the inescapable and insufferable indy sensation that put former Minneapolitan “Diablo Cody” on the map way back when – is now Elliot Page, and has asked to be referred to by the pronouns “he” and “they”.
And the media – mainstream and social – have complied with that demand at a clip that would have terrified Orwell, and probably Emmanuel Goldstein as well.
Elliot Page was never a woman, Winston.
Appropriated: Brendan O’Neil has an excellent piece at Spiked on the subject, focusing on three subjects – the Orwellian completeness of the “transformation”, the deleterious effect of the Transgender mafia on gay kids…
…and the bit that caught my attention: Page’s cultural appropriation. I’ll add some emphasis.
The disappearing of Ellen Page, and the demonisation of anyone who dares to mention that woman’s name, matters because it tells us a great deal about the increasing instability and elitism of identity politics. There are many reasons we should have a frank, legitimate discussion about Ellen Page rather than robotically repeating that she is now a he and that anyone who says otherwise is a moral reprobate. First, is it really the case that Page is male? A he? How can someone who doesn’t have male biology and who has had no male experiences – boyhood, male puberty, masculine impulses, being a brother, an uncle, a father – be a ‘he’? How does that work? Is it magic? Or have words like male, he, brother and father been so denuded of meaning thanks to the cult of genderfluidity that anyone can adopt them as their preferred identity? It is not prejudiced to ask these questions; it is reasonable, and important.
And the same goes the other way, for “women” who grew up male as well. If eating a burrito made by a white woman is genocide, what is being an insta-male or female?
It’s not you. It’s not even your identity. It’s the costume of the day.
Feminists have spent the last forty years convincing men thatn “no means no”.
So far so good.
They’ve spent a chunk of the last fifteen convincing first universities, then courts, that a “no”, even one applied retroactively and contradictorily, hours or days or months after the fact, really meant “no” even if it was an explicit “Yes” in the first place.
Feminist dogma has it than men are stupid – but some have developed a sense of self-preservation, and are starting to get affirmative consent on video immediately before, er, doing something that needs consent.
[Feminists] are not pleased with the idea of consent videos and their “problematic” ramifications.
In the case with [a woman complaining about the videos, idiot Brit feminist writer Rachel King] complains that the “implication” of a consent video “is that those in a position of power are the ones who need protection, and that’s just not true.”
I try to be polite. I really do. And I try to treat people they way I’d like to be treated.
Which is how I rationalize the following – because if I were being a complete dumbass like Rachel King, I’d hope someone pointed it out to me.
Rachel. Dumbass. Men don’t have the power. When a woman has the ability to ruin a man’s life over a false, flighty or stretchy accusation, the idea of “male power” is as quaint as an episode of “Leave It To Beaver”.
King, who mocked that “it’s apparently ‘a scary time for young men,'”
(Love the patrohization, Rachel. Also – eat s**t and die a painful death)
also emphasized that false accusations just don’t happen,
Duke. Virginia Tech. Every f****ng word out of Lena Dunham’s mouth.
pointing to a popularized hashtag on Twitter as evidence. “In reality, the vitriol that victims of rape and sexual assault are subject to is enough to put anyone off making a false report. If you don’t believe me, check out the #WhyIDidntReport tag on Twitter,” she wrote.
Without naming any particular accusation, I offer these factors for consideration to the fair-minded who remain open to the possibility that guilt or innocence is not simply a question of politics. I also remind the reader that politicizing these accusations have allowed men like Harvey Weinstein, Al Franken, Matt Lauer, Les Moonves, Bill Clinton, and Keith Ellison to escape accountability. Nobody seems to care if they walk the walk so long as they talk the talk.
Read the whole list. This one grabbed me:
4. When the accused’s opportunity to mount a defense is delegitimized.
The Duke Lacrosse coach was fired just for saying his players were innocent. When the players dared to protest their innocence, the prosecutor painted their stories in the press as “uncooperative.” If either the accused or the accused’s supporters are attacked for just for failing to agree with the accusation, it’s a red flag.
Two boys won the Connecticut state track meet. The Girls track meet. It’s “controversial.” It shouldn’t be.
A human being having two X chromosomes is biologically Female, while a human having one each X and Y is biologically Male. This is Sex, it’s science, it’s universally agreed to be true.
Over the last 5,000 years, human civilizations developed acceptable roles for members of the sexes. Women raised children, men hunted and fought. These were Gender Roles. Until very recently, these were universally agreed to be sensible and appropriate.
The biological difference in chromosomes results in physical differences in reproductive organs, musculature, and hormones, Male and Female sexes. Then societal difference results in differences in behavior, Masculine and Feminine. Sex led to Gender but they are not identical and not interchangeable. An individual biologically Female human may reject playing with dolls (training to raise children) preferring to roughhouse with boys (training for war) but being a Tomboy doesn’t change her from being a Girl.
All human attributes are distributed on a bell-shaped curve so yes, some women are stronger than some men; but at the competitive end of the curve, women simply cannot physically compete against men.
And everybody knows it. That’s why there are two leagues, Men’s and Women’s. That’s why Anika Sorenstam competing in the PGA was a publicity stunt. That’s why John McEnroe was entirely correct to say Serena Williams is a great women’s tennis player but wouldn’t stand a chance against the top men’s tennis players. She wouldn’t. You can see the difference for yourself – watch Boy’s state championships in any sport, then watch the Girls’ championships in the same sport. Boy champions are always stronger and faster than Girl champions.
Boys claiming to be pre-operative transgender Girls have been winning athletic contests in the Girls division for the last few years, in Alaska in 2016, in Connecticut last year, and two of them came in first and second in Connecticut this year. They are defended by LGBTQ activists who point out transgender people have hard lives because of societal expectations on dress, behavior and even bathroom use. Maybe so, but that doesn’t address the biological advantage of being born Male but competing against Females. Defending against Biology using the defense of Societal Role is bait-and-switch. People who refuse to acknowledge biology are science deniers.
If biological differences justify having two different leagues, then gender preference is irrelevant and those boys should go back to being losers in the Boys’ State meet. Otherwise, if we let them compete against Girls, then there are no Girls’ sports anymore, there are only Boys’ sports – some won by boys who admit it, and some won by boys who pretend not to be.
Joe Doakes
I look for the quality of WNBA basketball to improve a lot in about a decade…
