I'm a gay guy but if I were in a position to talk to an adolescent boy about his romantic life I wouldn't open by asking him if he had a boyfriend. I'd ask if he had a girlfriend. Most people are straight and, despite societies increasing openness in this regard, there's still some stigma around being gay. I figure that if a kid is gay and wants to let me know, he will. Kids don't need instruction from grown ups about how to feel same sex attraction. Believe me, I know.
I figure the same is true for trans kids. I wouldn't ask a kid if he "identifies" as a boy or a girl, but instead make that determination the old fashion way, by appearance. People who are genuinely trans will figure that out and let the rest of us know when they're ready. My job as an adult isn't to teach about the various possibilities and offer choices. If someone wants to express themselves in a way that doesn't comport with gender norms, I can be accepting. That's good enough. Kids don't need instruction in these matters. They will come to know the truth of who they are in their own time. What kids need from the adults in their lives is just love and acceptance.
Forced “acceptance” of DEI demands by federal agencies and woke corporate HR puppets enables the dysphoria disconnect. It’s the mandated “safe space” for the totalitarian freaks to punish “the majority” of normal folks to accept their fantasy--or be punished by job loss or grant money loss for not going along. Disgusting.
There's no such thing as trans rights. People have human rights, and that does not include going into the girls locker room as a male and taking a shower.
"Progressivism is all about the blind desire to uproot whatever currently exists."
hmmm sounds suspiciously like Marx's famous "ruthless criticism of all that exists."
First it was the proletariat who were destined to lead us to the Promised Land; up next were the Wretched of the Earth (aka the 3rd world); then Marcuse's "coalition of the marginalized"; and now an enraged and deranged army of Tranissaries, who are aiming right at the root of it all, the mammalian sex binary.
Is there any way we can let these people know that no matter who or what they destroy they will still feel mad bad and sad, that even if they were to fulfill their fantasies and turn our societies into rubble (the only possible Equality) they will still be filled with hatred, most especially self-hatred?
I guess the truth is that the only thing that makes miserable people happy is to make as many others as miserable as they are.
It's ABSOLUTELY Marx's famous "ruthless criticism of all that exists". Marcuse, Adorno, & Horkheimer might not have been "orthodox" Marxists, but they were definitely Marxists. And all the Critical Theory descends directly from Marcuse & Horkheimer.
And how was all this Marxism and Frankfurt school antinormativity deployed or evangelized to the masses? Required English writing classes for 4 decades to millions of freshman every year, then blossoming to teacher education programs and humanities disciplines and majors...
The best you can do is tell/encourage those who know this is idiocracy, to not be afraid to speak the word - to call it as it is and feel comfortable doing so.
It doesn't hurt to explain why. Apathy and self-censorship led us into this bizarro world. And that continuing to do so, just gives it oxygen.
To Marx platonic binaries are contradictions (and a source of new ‘becoming’) and are now seen as hated sources of oppression in principle such that actual biological binary reality is to be sacrificed for whatever genderless utopian newness is promised/prophesied
Hey i just read these interesting essays about Marx as Gnostic that I really enjoyed and clarified some things for me, esp around utopian metaphysics. Maybe you'll like:
Brad, as you said, the trans population is too small to attract this amount of political interest, especially since many are too young to vote. So obviously progressives are pursuing a different objective- but what?
My conclusion is that the objective is to force the populace to reject reality in favor of the ruling party's pronouncements. The objective is to force 2 + 2 = 5. Then progressives will have complete control.
They're also proving the power of the cult mentality.
Go back in time 5 years and tell wine mom Karen that she would be forced to support Bobby being on little Jenny's softball team. She would have told you that you were crazy.
Yet here they are -- and they know what happens if they fall out of line. Instant loss of social status, which means basically everything at this point because they've already driven away all of the non-cult members.
That has been my conclusion as well. If they can get all those who live in fear of ostracism and have as their only guiding moral principle to be as much as everyone else as possible to disbelieve objective reality and believe abject lies, the enslavement is complete. And what better end to start in that the most fundamental and foundational truths such a the sex-binary? When that which would be the hardest sell is bought by a large enough majority, everything else is a piece of cake.
and they will (are actually) constantly change said pronouncements so that all but a few will be either out of step or bending over backwards in order to stay in line.
I don’t think the trans-movement is an organic one spurred on by the trans activists themselves, although that’s what outward appearances would have you believe. Like all devision that’s being purposefully created, there’s a much bigger agenda. If de-population is in fact the agenda (which has been openly admitted) then a non-binary future would help implement said agenda. In the last few years, everything pro-humanity, pro-family, pro-children has been under attack; pushing the trans agenda, putting chemicals in our food supply (that mess up both male and female hormones), the horrendous effects of injectables on the reproductive system, the radical leftists insatiable desire to strip parents of their rights to protect their children...none of these occurrences were grass-roots initiatives...these are all top-level, heavily funded and propagandized psy-ops, and the reason the leftists have fallen hook line and sinker is probably due to the fact that they have (in general) been more deeply immersed in institutions of higher learning (aka higher brainwashing) which have clearly been infiltrated by globalist funded faculty for decades.
Thanks again Brad, for another amazing insightful and thought provoking piece. I know I keep saying that, but you just keep out-doing yourself.
I think it's also used as a way to produce the "bigots" on the other side they so desperately need, the same trick is used with abortion - it always brings out the crazy Republicans who say contraception is wrong, and they get as much cover in their own party as the crazy trans activists get from Democrats.
I think what makes this whole issue so controversial, and why the transgender and medical community is so autocratic is that while people can't vote until they are 18, as well as there being restrictions determined by states on a person's age before they can drive, and they can't get a drink at a bar unless they are 18, I think, but they're allowing children, and teenagers to make medical decisions that will affect their whole lives. They also do not fully understand, nor have they made a full assessment of the consequences of the medical implications of this type of treatment. They're defensive because they have no answers on a medical or psychological level.
I have become a fan of EUPHORIC RECALL. Though I can only afford to pay for two Substacks at a time, this will be my next. Keep up the good work, Brad.
Wonderful essay. I just want to respond to your footnote #1 stating that most trans folks are decent and gender dysphoria is a real phenomenon. I don’t think this is a salient point. The issue is not whether some people experience suffering because their internal image of themselves doesn’t match their reality. The issue is how do you treat or alleviate this suffering. The current trans movement attempts to alleviate this suffering by trying to bend reality to the shape of their internal image. But reality cannot be faked:
“To exist is to be something, to possess a specific identity. This is the Law of Identity: A is A. Facts are facts, independent of any consciousness. No amount of passionate wishing, desperate longing or hopeful pleading can alter the facts. Nor will ignoring or evading the facts erase them: the facts remain, immutable.”
I am a psychotherapist by profession. There are many reasons that people experience emotional suffering. Until recently, treatment often involved giving people tools to learn to tolerate these feelings and focus on building a meaningful life despite them. Now suddenly, we believe we have to avoid all causes of suffering, up to and including self-mutilation if it helps us to feel better in the short run. But this is an illusion. Just like an Anorexic will literally starve themselves to death, because they can never be thin enough (because thinness wasn’t the problem in the first place), people who mistakenly believe they were “born in the wrong body” will never reach a point where they experience inner peace due to surgical and hormonal alterations, because they are treating the wrong problem. Their dissatisfaction with self does not arise from a mismatch between reality and their “true self” and unless they learn to identify what they truly dislike about themselves they will never find peace.
I'm ready to throw in the the towel. The fact of the matter is that while "support" of the trans goals may not be high, support of the politicians who support this, is extremely high. If people, especially women, are willing to support this and the evidence shows, in the cases where they do not support, their opposition is feeble and those that do step up are ostracized by the majority of the population. Screw it! You deserve what you vote for. The same is happening in chicago. People are getting what they vote for and they deserve to get it good and hard (to paraphrase Mencken.)
I also think "puberty blocker" is an euphemism. It's chemical castration. The drugs were originally designed as a cancer treatment (where the hormones would make the cancer grow) and also used for chemical castration of sex offenders. Attempting to delay or block puberty is an off-label use, it's not well studied if it causes irreversible damage since most go on to go on hormone replacement for life with its own ill-effects. Studying this is simply not possible because no IRB would allow a study in human children on ethical grounds.
I'd also add that trans representation in media can give an unrealistic version of what one might look like after the treatment. Maybe with realistic portrayals people will be encouraged to seek other options since it's hard to dispute, even considering all the fake positive feedback, that the surgeries mostly make you look like a disfigured freakshow, to say nothing of the lifelong medical treatment required and the (gross) realities of having fake, non-functional body parts. It severely limits the dating pool to a few perverts.
I wouldn't be surprised to see the rise of "bot-sexual" in the next couple years, and then a move for "bot-sexual rights" shortly thereafter.
If you can identify as a man, women, or whatever, then why not have marriage rights for people who are "attracted" to sex-dolls with an LLM for a brain?
I'm a gay guy but if I were in a position to talk to an adolescent boy about his romantic life I wouldn't open by asking him if he had a boyfriend. I'd ask if he had a girlfriend. Most people are straight and, despite societies increasing openness in this regard, there's still some stigma around being gay. I figure that if a kid is gay and wants to let me know, he will. Kids don't need instruction from grown ups about how to feel same sex attraction. Believe me, I know.
I figure the same is true for trans kids. I wouldn't ask a kid if he "identifies" as a boy or a girl, but instead make that determination the old fashion way, by appearance. People who are genuinely trans will figure that out and let the rest of us know when they're ready. My job as an adult isn't to teach about the various possibilities and offer choices. If someone wants to express themselves in a way that doesn't comport with gender norms, I can be accepting. That's good enough. Kids don't need instruction in these matters. They will come to know the truth of who they are in their own time. What kids need from the adults in their lives is just love and acceptance.
Thank you. Well said.
Forced “acceptance” of DEI demands by federal agencies and woke corporate HR puppets enables the dysphoria disconnect. It’s the mandated “safe space” for the totalitarian freaks to punish “the majority” of normal folks to accept their fantasy--or be punished by job loss or grant money loss for not going along. Disgusting.
This!
There's no such thing as trans rights. People have human rights, and that does not include going into the girls locker room as a male and taking a shower.
"There's no such thing as trans rights."
There's no such thing as trans. What exists is gender dysphoria.
"Progressivism is all about the blind desire to uproot whatever currently exists."
hmmm sounds suspiciously like Marx's famous "ruthless criticism of all that exists."
First it was the proletariat who were destined to lead us to the Promised Land; up next were the Wretched of the Earth (aka the 3rd world); then Marcuse's "coalition of the marginalized"; and now an enraged and deranged army of Tranissaries, who are aiming right at the root of it all, the mammalian sex binary.
Is there any way we can let these people know that no matter who or what they destroy they will still feel mad bad and sad, that even if they were to fulfill their fantasies and turn our societies into rubble (the only possible Equality) they will still be filled with hatred, most especially self-hatred?
I guess the truth is that the only thing that makes miserable people happy is to make as many others as miserable as they are.
It's ABSOLUTELY Marx's famous "ruthless criticism of all that exists". Marcuse, Adorno, & Horkheimer might not have been "orthodox" Marxists, but they were definitely Marxists. And all the Critical Theory descends directly from Marcuse & Horkheimer.
And how was all this Marxism and Frankfurt school antinormativity deployed or evangelized to the masses? Required English writing classes for 4 decades to millions of freshman every year, then blossoming to teacher education programs and humanities disciplines and majors...
i was coming to same conclusion, the only thing that will make them feel less bad and sad is if everyone else feels mad bad and sad.
The best you can do is tell/encourage those who know this is idiocracy, to not be afraid to speak the word - to call it as it is and feel comfortable doing so.
It doesn't hurt to explain why. Apathy and self-censorship led us into this bizarro world. And that continuing to do so, just gives it oxygen.
To Marx platonic binaries are contradictions (and a source of new ‘becoming’) and are now seen as hated sources of oppression in principle such that actual biological binary reality is to be sacrificed for whatever genderless utopian newness is promised/prophesied
Hey i just read these interesting essays about Marx as Gnostic that I really enjoyed and clarified some things for me, esp around utopian metaphysics. Maybe you'll like:
https://lorenzofromoz.substack.com/p/marx-was-neither-an-economist-nor
Brad, as you said, the trans population is too small to attract this amount of political interest, especially since many are too young to vote. So obviously progressives are pursuing a different objective- but what?
My conclusion is that the objective is to force the populace to reject reality in favor of the ruling party's pronouncements. The objective is to force 2 + 2 = 5. Then progressives will have complete control.
They're also proving the power of the cult mentality.
Go back in time 5 years and tell wine mom Karen that she would be forced to support Bobby being on little Jenny's softball team. She would have told you that you were crazy.
Yet here they are -- and they know what happens if they fall out of line. Instant loss of social status, which means basically everything at this point because they've already driven away all of the non-cult members.
That has been my conclusion as well. If they can get all those who live in fear of ostracism and have as their only guiding moral principle to be as much as everyone else as possible to disbelieve objective reality and believe abject lies, the enslavement is complete. And what better end to start in that the most fundamental and foundational truths such a the sex-binary? When that which would be the hardest sell is bought by a large enough majority, everything else is a piece of cake.
and they will (are actually) constantly change said pronouncements so that all but a few will be either out of step or bending over backwards in order to stay in line.
I don’t think the trans-movement is an organic one spurred on by the trans activists themselves, although that’s what outward appearances would have you believe. Like all devision that’s being purposefully created, there’s a much bigger agenda. If de-population is in fact the agenda (which has been openly admitted) then a non-binary future would help implement said agenda. In the last few years, everything pro-humanity, pro-family, pro-children has been under attack; pushing the trans agenda, putting chemicals in our food supply (that mess up both male and female hormones), the horrendous effects of injectables on the reproductive system, the radical leftists insatiable desire to strip parents of their rights to protect their children...none of these occurrences were grass-roots initiatives...these are all top-level, heavily funded and propagandized psy-ops, and the reason the leftists have fallen hook line and sinker is probably due to the fact that they have (in general) been more deeply immersed in institutions of higher learning (aka higher brainwashing) which have clearly been infiltrated by globalist funded faculty for decades.
Thanks again Brad, for another amazing insightful and thought provoking piece. I know I keep saying that, but you just keep out-doing yourself.
I think it's also used as a way to produce the "bigots" on the other side they so desperately need, the same trick is used with abortion - it always brings out the crazy Republicans who say contraception is wrong, and they get as much cover in their own party as the crazy trans activists get from Democrats.
I think what makes this whole issue so controversial, and why the transgender and medical community is so autocratic is that while people can't vote until they are 18, as well as there being restrictions determined by states on a person's age before they can drive, and they can't get a drink at a bar unless they are 18, I think, but they're allowing children, and teenagers to make medical decisions that will affect their whole lives. They also do not fully understand, nor have they made a full assessment of the consequences of the medical implications of this type of treatment. They're defensive because they have no answers on a medical or psychological level.
I have become a fan of EUPHORIC RECALL. Though I can only afford to pay for two Substacks at a time, this will be my next. Keep up the good work, Brad.
Wonderful essay. I just want to respond to your footnote #1 stating that most trans folks are decent and gender dysphoria is a real phenomenon. I don’t think this is a salient point. The issue is not whether some people experience suffering because their internal image of themselves doesn’t match their reality. The issue is how do you treat or alleviate this suffering. The current trans movement attempts to alleviate this suffering by trying to bend reality to the shape of their internal image. But reality cannot be faked:
“To exist is to be something, to possess a specific identity. This is the Law of Identity: A is A. Facts are facts, independent of any consciousness. No amount of passionate wishing, desperate longing or hopeful pleading can alter the facts. Nor will ignoring or evading the facts erase them: the facts remain, immutable.”
I am a psychotherapist by profession. There are many reasons that people experience emotional suffering. Until recently, treatment often involved giving people tools to learn to tolerate these feelings and focus on building a meaningful life despite them. Now suddenly, we believe we have to avoid all causes of suffering, up to and including self-mutilation if it helps us to feel better in the short run. But this is an illusion. Just like an Anorexic will literally starve themselves to death, because they can never be thin enough (because thinness wasn’t the problem in the first place), people who mistakenly believe they were “born in the wrong body” will never reach a point where they experience inner peace due to surgical and hormonal alterations, because they are treating the wrong problem. Their dissatisfaction with self does not arise from a mismatch between reality and their “true self” and unless they learn to identify what they truly dislike about themselves they will never find peace.
Thank you for your comment!
I'm ready to throw in the the towel. The fact of the matter is that while "support" of the trans goals may not be high, support of the politicians who support this, is extremely high. If people, especially women, are willing to support this and the evidence shows, in the cases where they do not support, their opposition is feeble and those that do step up are ostracized by the majority of the population. Screw it! You deserve what you vote for. The same is happening in chicago. People are getting what they vote for and they deserve to get it good and hard (to paraphrase Mencken.)
I wish that were how it works. In reality, no matter how I vote against at this, I get what others deserve.
I also think "puberty blocker" is an euphemism. It's chemical castration. The drugs were originally designed as a cancer treatment (where the hormones would make the cancer grow) and also used for chemical castration of sex offenders. Attempting to delay or block puberty is an off-label use, it's not well studied if it causes irreversible damage since most go on to go on hormone replacement for life with its own ill-effects. Studying this is simply not possible because no IRB would allow a study in human children on ethical grounds.
I'd also add that trans representation in media can give an unrealistic version of what one might look like after the treatment. Maybe with realistic portrayals people will be encouraged to seek other options since it's hard to dispute, even considering all the fake positive feedback, that the surgeries mostly make you look like a disfigured freakshow, to say nothing of the lifelong medical treatment required and the (gross) realities of having fake, non-functional body parts. It severely limits the dating pool to a few perverts.
We have arrived at the point where the person protecting a child from being mutilated by a man with a knife has become the enemy
Brad - get back out on the Stacks. C'mon man...you're stuff is too good.
Please don't give up...."recruit".
I wish I had more subscribers, but all I can do is try 😔. I really appreciate your support!
You got me by tacitly recruiting. And I'm not easily sold. Just saying
I wouldn't be surprised to see the rise of "bot-sexual" in the next couple years, and then a move for "bot-sexual rights" shortly thereafter.
If you can identify as a man, women, or whatever, then why not have marriage rights for people who are "attracted" to sex-dolls with an LLM for a brain?
"Transphobic? Kill yourself"
Brad, you always find the perfect visual to illustrate your point.
Great essay. Very well researched and written.
Well met, Brad. Excellent article.