Never thought I would read a long-ish piece on trans topics in America and exclaim "Exactly!!" halfway through.
Here is Taf Taj for Reason Magazine, "The Progressive Betrayals of Trans Americans."
The trans mania is, on the one hand, the obvious sign of Western moral and intellectual decline (Douglas Murray books, The War on the West + The Madness of Crowds) and the world's most insidious shit-test/1984-membership Litmus test/political distraction: to declare, against all senses and logic, that a man is a woman is a pretty terrifying, social authoritarianism. But hey, some people feel that way (#895198), so knock yourselves out!
Whatever, just let people be?
Yes, truly. America is (was?) great, in part because its people was happy to largely let people do the wacky things they wanted to do.
- Try some crazy idea? OK.
- Go at it alone and live in the woods? FINE.
- Pray to the spaghetti monster? What do I care.
- Color your hair blue? Yes, yes, but please get out of my sight.
- Go to Aruba or the Himalayas and meditate for a month? UGH, whatever.
The author in this Reason piece gives voice exactly to that notion, but applied to the trans stuff:
I should have the freedom to wear the clothes I want to wear and I should have the freedom to pursue cosmetic changes to my body. But that freedom goes both ways. You should be free to not care, not date me, not call me a woman, and not pay for my hormones or surgeries.
Precisely.
The very "freedom" that lets you dress up or think of yourself as something you are (not) is the same freedom that lets me think you're an idiot for doing it. For social harmony to work, for us to coexist, all we have to do is leave people to do their own thing. But "leaving people alone" isn't the same as socially going out of your way to accommodate, enable, celebrate, and encourage someone's delusion; neither is it making sure government money is spent on their (or anyone's) proclivities.
At some level, that's what most bona fide trans peeps/<insert whichever group> wants. Author agrees:
Is that un-American if someone uses "he" or "him" to describe me? What if someone calls me a "tranny"? What if someone calls me a tranny and I'm OK with it? Faced with questions like these, it's not surprising that an often flawed government might fail to regulate effectively. As an adult, I feel I should have the right to negotiate my own boundaries for what's appropriate.
What gets so weird is when social justice movements or political forces or "allies" support <whatever group> by mainstreaming or inserting it everywhere, included (but certainly not limited to) email signatures—cmon, peeps, stop shoving your retarded shit in my face... what happened to "just leave people alone?"
The article discusses the "Lizardman"—apparently some weird dude in Texas who surgically implanted a bunch of things in his face and forked his tongue and made his skin all green. He "presents" as a Lizard.
Cases like the "Lizardman" suggest that Americans are broadly open to even radical free expression.
True, but also a false analogy to the trans stuff:
Nobody goes out of their way to interfere with Lizardmans' dubious (enlightened?) life choices... but as far as I know, he is not going around town insisting that people actually treat him like a lizard, call him "gecko" in social settings, actually greet him with necks stuck up in the air, or lick his face to taste/smell what's up today. Moreover, I imagine Lizardman still gets to vote(?) and own property—freedoms we don't recognize Lizards as having—and there's no animal rights shelter coming to pick him up (and lock him up, for his own "protection") when he's left his fenced-in area.
That is: No matter how sincerely and genuinely he think he's a lizard, there's no social or legal impetus on the rest of us to buy into that. But we can't/shouldn't throw him in jail for it.
That's the obvious social-harmony middle ground here. Nobody should go to jail or be fined by their government for saying weird things or displaying weird attires; that's some kind of basic American (human?!) freedom. But the same American freedom lets people call each other out for stupid shit.
I've always said that discrimination—whatever that silly word is supposed to mean, really—is how free societies organize and regulate deviant behavior. Nothing wrong with that.
Lovely dude, anyways: