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About This Whole Transgender Rights Discussion

From our special correspondent, Esteban DeGolf:

Given the amount of attention transgender issues (or am I supposed to say “issues of transgender”) are drawing there are a few things that have been ignored that I think ought to be discussed.
Just an aside, but I can’t help recalling the scene from Monty Python’s “Life of Brian” about Loretta. You can search for “Life of Brian right to have babies scene” if you don’t remember it. I can’t help wondering if the members of Monty Python have been called on the carpet to abjectly apologize for this scene. To speak of “life imitating art” a number of lines that were a total farce at that time would pass for a serious discussion today:

Judith: “Why do you want to be Loretta, Stan?”
Stan: “I want to have babies”
Reg: “You want to have babies?”
Stan: “It’s every man’s right to have babies if he wants them”
Reg: “You can’t have babies”
Stan/Loretta: “Don’t you oppress me”
Judith: “Suppose you agree that he can’t actually have babies, not having a womb, which is nobody’s fault, not even the Romans, but that he can have the right to have babies”

Moving on, there is an important aspect of these discussions that I find is glossed over or ignored. I think there are two primary ways a transgender person may describe their situation (in this example I’m using male/female but it works the same the other way around, just so I’m not triggering anybody):

Option 1 – “I know I have male genitalia and X and Y chromosomes, therefore biologically I am a male, but I’ve always thought I should have been born a woman”
Option 2 – “I don’t care what my genitalia or chromosomes are, I am a female”

I’m comfortable with discussions about how we deal with Option 1 situations, hopefully we can find accommodations that work pretty well for the vast majority of people. However, is it just me, or does it not seem that Option 2 is delusional? If we agree that Option 2 must be treated as legitimate (or venerated) can we apply this to other traits such as race, species, century, etc.? I think I want to be Napoleon. I heard a psychologist discussing the practice of allowing young children to select their gender and even begin treatments to change it who noted “if your second grader comes home and tells you they’re in the CIA you don’t respond, ‘great honey, what’s your code name?’”

Another puzzler – a year or so back, in college sports in the U.S. the NCAA ran a particular commercial/PSA quite often. A young woman would drive a soccer ball forcefully into the back of the net, turn to the camera and say “I’m over it”. Then a female volleyball player would hammer a spike over the net and note “so am I”. Finally another impressive female athlete would proclaim “genders don’t play sports, athletes do”. I never understood what their point was. Given that the NCAA is at 99 on the PC scale I can only assume it was meant to be supportive of transgenders, although I could interpret it in the opposite direction. Assuming I’m right that it was the PC message I find it gobsmacking – these young women have a scholarship to play on women’s teams and would be out of work if young men are allowed to declare themselves transgendered and compete with them. There have been at least a few instances where men who identify as women have seriously hurt women in competition and if enough men wish to take advantage of this there probably won’t be a single woman who can compete in sports.

One final point that I think is important and overlooked. The PC crowd ask “why are you so mean, if we allow transgender people to live as they see themselves what’s the harm?” – or something to that affect. However, I think there is a slight flaw in their plan. First, we have to accept whatever someone tells us regarding their gender identity. Second, once they have made this known we have to treat them as if that is not just their gender identity but their biological sex. Does anyone think this won’t lead to at least a few cases of abuse? If I want to hang out in the ladies locker room to watch them shower and dress, all I have to do is say I identify as a woman – perhaps not even that, it might be a microaggression to ask why I’m there. Likewise, if there is a scholarship available for the women’s basketball team any man who is willing to say he identifies as a woman is free to try out.

I suppose a lot of what is troubling about this comes down to the point of “Chesterton’s Fence” – if you haven’t thought this through perhaps you should slow down bit.

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Mr Ecks
Mr Ecks
6 years ago

“One final point that I think is important and overlooked. The PC crowd ask “why are you so mean, if we allow transgender people to live as they see themselves what’s the harm?” – or something to that affect. However, I think there is a slight flaw in their plan. First, we have to accept whatever someone tells us regarding their gender identity. Second, once they have made this known we have to treat them as if that is not just their gender identity but their biological sex. Does anyone think this won’t lead to at least a few cases… Read more »

Southerner
6 years ago
Reply to  Mr Ecks

I am leftist socialist scum. I understand that sexual identity is not a simple binary. It is a spectrum from a hundred per cent hetero to a hundred per cent homo. Very, very few of us occupy those extremes. I don’t suppose you have ever been to a stag party and watched a porn video. If you have, you may have noticed the reaction of your fellows if the stud in the movie is not a prime example of masculinity. For example if he is balding, bepaunched and nothing out of the ordinary in the kit-and-tackle department. My understanding is… Read more »

Mr Ecks
Mr Ecks
6 years ago
Reply to  Southerner

Did I mention “sexual identity” in the post? I mentioned reality–physical reality. That you may be a ???sexual is your problem. Whatever the condition of your psyche you are not a woman regardless of how confused you are on the inside about anything. Or everything. Look down at your dick porno man . You are not a woman( or vice versa if you are). By all means carry on with your whatever. But don’t be trying to demand that others accept deliberate falsehood as truth. Especially when that set of lies is being sold to advance a cause that has… Read more »

Edward Lud
Edward Lud
6 years ago

Munroe Bergdorf seems well-adjusted, and likely to be congenial companion, poltical bedfellow and decent member of society. So it’s all good.

Spike
6 years ago
Reply to  Edward Lud

‘Facebook comments….included the claim that all white people were guilty of “racial violence” and that the white race was “the most violent and oppressive force of nature on Earth.”‘ (Wikipedia)

Spike
6 years ago

Option 2 is more defiant than Option 1. Both are equally delusional.

The battleground now is not “letting them live as they see themselves.” Everyone else must give way, from schoolgirls who don’t want a man in the showers, to females on the wrestling team in Texas who don’t want to keep losing to a competitor “in transition” and shot up with testosterone, to the car dealer who doesn’t want a man in a dress repelling customers in the showroom.

Hal
Hal
6 years ago

Apart from one sentence playing lip-service to FM tran’s, this would seem to be another example of blatant misandry. “If I want to hang out in the ladies locker room to watch them shower and dress, all I have to do is say I identify as a woman” That’s not in any way belittling? How would that sentence sound if it was a woman identifying as a man? Or how about switching the “Life of Brian” joke around? This time it’s about a women who wants to father a child. Still funny? Rewrite your article and this time do a… Read more »

Twatting on Tim
6 years ago

Trans…yeah just fuck off. Take a few minutes to read something of benefit to society and not fucking perversions. he UK’s right wing press has been ‘over the moon’ because the government has finally balanced its current budget this year, meaning that borrowing is only being used to finance investment. There are two problems with this though. The first is it has only happened at cost to the millions of people in the UK who are now considerably worse off than they need be, some of whom have been pushed into serious poverty as a result, including many families with… Read more »

Steve
Steve
6 years ago

“a few cases of abuse” It’s interesting that, when you look back at the stuff stodgy, stuffy conservatives warned us about: legalising abortion, the sexual revolution, immigration, handing out contraceptives like sweeties, the welfare state, repealing section 28, etc… the reality turned out to be far, far worse than even the most pessimistic of reactionaries predicted. So… we abort about 100,000 healthy babies a year. Fatherless homes, and all the attendant social pathologies, are at an all-time high. You can go to jail for “homophobia”, we’re drowning in debt, and we have sub-replacement birthrates at exactly the same time as… Read more »

Ljh
Ljh
6 years ago

Let’s put gender to one side, we keep being told it’s a construct. The categories for change rooms and ladies loos should be “with dicks” and “without dicks”: this should keep out all but the most committed trannies who have gone to the trouble of neutering themselves. Sport is a harder one as, even debollocked and pumped with hormones, XY chromosomes confer advantages of strength and speed. FTMs receiving testosterone are a lot stronger than untreated women conferring an advantage if they continue to compete against them. Although professional sport has become such a circus maybe it doesn’t matter.

Dave
Dave
6 years ago

There are a lot of misunderstandings here. No-one says that every TG-identifying person is correct, or that we’re sure we’re understanding the issues and responding appropriately. The discussion is about how best to handle the situation with tact and sensitivity given those uncertainties. At the end of the day, the libertarian argument is very simple: it’s their bodies, they can do whatever makes them feel good/better-than-otherwise. As far as speech and so-on go, if someone asks you politely to use a certain form of speech – particularly someone you think might not be completely sane – why on earth wouldn’t… Read more »

Spike
6 years ago
Reply to  Dave

I do treat people behaving bizarrely with “tact and sensitivity,” having been a Sports Mascot. Likewise Scots wearing kilts. Less so schoolchildren being ridiculous; I do them the favor of correcting them early. And not at all when adults playing pretend come to the legislature and demand never to suffer the consequences of their conduct, such as being passed over for employment for any reason and that it be made ILLEGAL for a counselor to disabuse a child of their silly notions. You cannot be a libertarian if you surrender your views on the basis whenever “it matters much more… Read more »

NiV
NiV
6 years ago
Reply to  Spike

It’s certainly an acceptable libertarian position to hold that anyone can tell somebody else they think their medical condition is imaginary, they’re being silly, and to pass them over for employment. But by the same reasoning, it’s equally valid for anyone meeting a transphobe to tell them they’re wrong, they’re being silly, and to pass them over for employment. Or to fire them if they only find out about it after they’re employed. If you’re also OK with a TG-believer firing an employee for telling a TG kid they’re wrong, and you’re only arguing it shouldn’t be required by law,… Read more »

Spike
6 years ago
Reply to  NiV

Transgender is not a “medical condition,” despite your usual initial contribution of technobabble to portray people playing pretend as one more class of able-minded passive victims. Nor in this comment, where you set “believers” against “phobes.” I am OK with anyone being fired for any reason. I am OK with someone advising a young man to ditch the dress. Firing an employee for giving such advice seems petty, but the employer owns the job and has work to get done. So don’t call me an “authoritarian” (or a hypocrite) on the off chance. And I defend your right to start… Read more »

NiV
NiV
6 years ago
Reply to  Spike

“Transgender is not a “medical condition,””

The medical profession think it is.

” Firing an employee for giving such advice seems petty, but the employer owns the job and has work to get done.”

OK. I have no problem with that. I agree with you.

Dave
Dave
6 years ago
Reply to  Spike

No-one suggested surrendering any views. You just don’t have to express your views to people who say they’re offended by them. If you think they’re batshit, why wouldn’t you say whatever is necessary to placate them? Do you go around deliberately winding up people with (other, if you believe so) mental illnesses? That aside, libertarianism in practice involves stepping aside for other people when they feel more strongly than you about something. As for illegality, it’s illegal to say lots of things. It’s illegal in every jurisdiction I know of for non-medical professionals to masquerade as doctors and/or provide unqualified… Read more »

Spike
6 years ago
Reply to  Dave

Sorry, I was imprecise. You might indeed not surrender your views but you sound ready to surrender the public-policy position, for example, to agree with granting a man in a skirt a special right not to be fired, depending only on whether he seems to “feel more strongly than you.” No skin off your nose.

Libertarianism says nothing about how civil we should be in public (though yielding to people who act upset breeds incivility) nor on any duty to advise others of their mistakes.

Dave
Dave
6 years ago
Reply to  Spike

I tend to the view that people should be free to choose who they do business with, or employ, as long as they’re open about it. If you want to publicly state that you won’t employ some category of people – whether that’s gay people, Christians, cyclists, or anything else – then people can freely choose whether they want to do business with you, or avoid doing so, as they see fit. Aside from that, I think that it’s just basic politeness to (where possible) avoid disagreeing with people who have strongly held views – except when debating those views,… Read more »

Mr Ecks
Mr Ecks
6 years ago

Tim–This–“he UK’s right wing press has been ‘over” is the first sentence from the third para of Twatty’s “comment”. He is cutting and pasting the shite from Spud’s blog. Except he missed the T in “The” when he did so.

Post his so-called comments minus the Murphobollocks. He will either have to write his own –beyond the two illiterate lines that precede the C&P–or give up.

Mr Ecks
Mr Ecks
6 years ago

Dave: “At the end of the day, the libertarian argument is very simple: it’s their bodies, they can do whatever makes them feel good/better-than-otherwise.” If some troubled character wants to dress as a woman (or as Batman for all I give a shite)–fine. But they are not going in the ladies toilet or being treated as the Saviour of Gotham City. “As far as speech and so-on go, if someone asks you politely to use a certain form of speech – particularly someone you think might not be completely sane – why on earth wouldn’t you oblige, when it’s no… Read more »

Pcar
Pcar
6 years ago

Related to Steve’s comment Link: The hate at the heart of identity politics …Don’t even start Ms Bergdorf on homosexuals who support the Tory Party (‘special kind of dickhead[s]’), the Suffragettes (‘white supremacists’), or homeless people (the white ones apparently ‘have white privilege’ – lucky bastards). For someone who blathers on about acceptance, Ms Bergdorf seems curiously unaccepting of certain groups of people. That Ms Bergdorf, a trans-woman and sometime model, poses as a promoter of tolerance and diversity and yet at the same time sanctions hatred or at least disdain for large sections of society has got some people… Read more »

Dave
Dave
6 years ago

Ecksy, dear, why are there such things as ‘ladies toilets’ (or gents)? About time we just have ‘toilets’. I think we can grant you permission to be rude to people since it’s clear you’re also at best borderline sane. No reason you should have to give way to others saner than you. But do be clear about what you’re saying here: you think someone who insists on being called an elephant is insane, but you don’t feel that tolerating them is required (in your case) because… you’re so offended by what a mad person believes that you can’t treat them… Read more »

BenS
BenS
6 years ago
Reply to  Dave

That’s ingenuous. When the mad person wants to get laws made so that you are legally obliged to stop saying they’re mad, do you still carry on with “being polite”?

NiV
NiV
6 years ago

” I think there are two primary ways a transgender person may describe their situation” Have you ever asked one? Let’s try: Option 3: Sex determination in the womb is a complex process and has many places where it can go wrong, causing some bits of an organisms to be built according to a different pattern to the rest. For example, a faulty version of the androgen receptor gene NR34C4 can sometimes cause some parts of the developing brain to not respond to dihydrotestosterone in the womb, causing them to develop along the female pattern. In essence, they have female… Read more »

Mr Ecks
Mr Ecks
6 years ago

Dave: “But do be clear about what you’re saying here: you think someone who insists on being called an elephant is insane, but you don’t feel that tolerating them is required (in your case) because… you’re so offended by what a mad person believes that you can’t treat them as a mad person. That’s far madder.” Some fool who believes himself to be an elephant can hang about the zoo, make silly noises –whatever the fuck he likes so long as he isn’t hurting anybody. I don’t care. But I will not acknowledge that he IS an elephant for the… Read more »

PJF
PJF
6 years ago

Steve wrote:
“It gets worse. Transgender ideology is about the abolition of biological sanity itself. We may all laugh at Facebook’s Heinz 57 gender options, but if that sort of batshit lunacy successfully gets the full coercive power of the state behind it…”

Stepping stones:
Student barred from class for claiming there are two genders
https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=10622

NiV
NiV
6 years ago
Reply to  PJF

Yes. I agree with the student. Whether he’s right or wrong, the proper response is to debate such views, not punish them. Especially in a classroom.

But I’d note that the lecturer and university authorities are all cis-gender. It’s not the TGs who have the problem here.

Dave
Dave
6 years ago
Reply to  PJF

Did you just ignore the bits in that article that you don’t like? He wasn’t slung out of class for his views, but for the way he expressed them: being disruptive, shouting out of turn, and publicly accusing the teacher of dishonesty. He has to write a letter of apology for that. Sounds like a normal school day to me. I had to write a letter of apology to a teacher for much the same thing in my day – despite being right in a dispute about objective facts (unlike this one). For once the school was absolutely correct. Being… Read more »

Mr Ecks
Mr Ecks
6 years ago
Reply to  Dave

Perhaps he was sick of marxist shite being served up daily .

You must get thro’ lots of pairs of trousers Dave — between shitting yourself and wearing the knees out with all the crawling.

The kid should have told them to shove their “education” up their arse and gone to learn a trade.

Spike
6 years ago
Reply to  PJF

The student was fed a sexism advocacy video by a sexist “religious studies” professor who then went on to solicit comments by only the females. He waited a respectable amount of time. Even assuming it devolved into a shouting match with the instructor, he was sanctioned for not being Pee Cee and not for the manner in which he disagreed. And the gender wage gap IS a myth. It went up the chain of command, and the offender will be given a process of Communist Re-education, including having the victims of his ideas scold him for how they felt. However,… Read more »

Dave
Dave
6 years ago

Ecsky, dear, the one bit I don’t get is why you hang around here when you agree root and branch with everything Ritchie proposes to do.

Mr Ecks
Mr Ecks
6 years ago
Reply to  Dave

Feel free to expand on that concept Dave –should you have the time to waste. I don’t.

Dave
Dave
6 years ago
Reply to  Mr Ecks

There’s not much expansion needed. You’re a frothy-mouthed far-righter with a passion for Adolf. So is he. He’s just a bit subtler about telling the world he wants to kill everyone he doesn’t agree with than you are.

Mr Ecks
Mr Ecks
6 years ago
Reply to  Dave

You left out the Jewish bankers rant again Dave. That isn’t like you. Are you trying to polish your new image as Mr Caring/Sharing? The Soyboy whose bag is loaded only with peanuts? Nothing that will frighten an SJW. And all for politeness.

No need anymore for you to worry that hating Jews might spoil your new image Dave. Corbog is making it entirely respectable. Say–were you on that FB page as well? You were? You’re a sleb after all and we never even knew it.

Steve
Steve
6 years ago

Pcar – good article. Mr O’Neill is right to say: “This is the nasty racial, sexual and religious fragmentation unleashed by a politics that celebrates and rewards those who claim to suffer: a competitive victimhood in which solidarity is not only difficult, but impossible.” It seems to me that this is, of course, a feature rather than a bug. Identity politics being the mutant bastard offspring of Marxism and all that. Furthermore, the main reason it has found the space to flourish is because normal people have lost confidence in what we might call bourgeois values. A confident civilisation inculcates… Read more »

NiV
NiV
6 years ago
Reply to  Steve

“Identity politics being the mutant bastard offspring of Marxism and all that.” Identity politics is pure ‘us-vs-them’ tribalism. It’s been around since before we were humans, long before Marx came along. “Furthermore, the main reason it has found the space to flourish is because normal people have lost confidence in what we might call bourgeois values.” Values change. We don’t have the same values we had in Victorian times, or Medieval times. And in every age, with every set of values, there are people who make it their business to force conformity with the new social norms on others. Today… Read more »

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