Dead Wild Roses

The demands of people for you as a third party to partake in their gender-fantasy is not a reasonable one.

What other adults think and believe in society is not my responsibility.  I believe that society should be based on verifiable facts, evinced arguments, and the willingness to be compromise on contentious issues.  We’re all not going to get exactly what we want from society, but through negotiation and Reason, a middling solution must be found.  The best way to interrogate the issues that we all face in the broader societal context is to have the ability to discuss social issues without fear in a nuanced and usually complex way.  No topic should be off limits in a reasonable discussion – yet an entire class of unreasonable arguments seems to be off that table.   Those arguments deal with the ideas of personal identity and how the individual and society is supposed to interact.

The problematic identities that are causing friction in society usually involve the nebulous concept of ‘gender’.  Gender is the set of socially constructed beliefs and values that are associated with the two sexes of human beings in society.  For instance, males are aggressive and good leaders, while females are compassionate and good care-givers are both examples of sex stereotypes (aka gender) that individuals in each sex class are saddled with.  Society is constructed around the preservation of these stereotypes and in breaking them there is usually a negative social cost involved.

Feminists, during the second wave, sought to break down these gender stereotypes and move toward an understanding of gender as an often toxic construction of norms and ideas that shouldn’t necessarily be followed.  Gender non-conforming behaviour was lauded as the way forward as individuals of both sexes should be able to access and embody the traits and values that were traditionally ‘not allowed’ for them.  Women could be aggressive, powerful leaders while men could be caring nurturing and family orientated – and neither would face social censure for acting outside what was considered “normal” for their sex classes.

I consider the refutation of gender norms and gender non-conforming behaviour to be the way forward in society as individuals should be able to embody whatever sex stereotypical sets of behaviours that seem right for them.

All of this is based on the notion that gender is a set of sex stereotypical behaviours that have been arbitrarily (and some times coercively) assigned to the two human sexes.

The Transgender Identity movement we know today takes precisely the opposite view of sex stereotypes and how they should play out in society.  Transgender ideology states that the act of performing and identifying with one set of sex stereotypes *makes* you that stereotype AND the physical sex associated with it.  So for instance, a man who likes wearing high heels and dresses (both sex stereotypical clothing types) should be regarded as a ‘woman’ (adult human female).  Because, in transgender ideology, adopting femininity and feminine affect is what makes women ‘women’.

To reality based feminists and most of the general population this is a preposterous notion.  Human beings inhabit a sexual binary.  We are either male or female for the most part.  What makes a woman or a man is simply being male or female with all the associated physical characteristics.  We are defined by the sex class we are born into – the set of stereotypes prescribed for us is based on natal sex.  Second Wave feminism correctly identified gender as (usually harmful) sex-stereotypes and specifically rallied against the notion that to be a proper man or a woman one must follow the normative prescriptions of gender identity.

Transgender ideology flips this around and says that people who don’t associate with set of sex stereotypes that are assigned to them must then adopt the stereotypes of the opposite sex and through gender magic the individual ‘transitions’ to actually being the opposite sex.  Thus, acting a male acting in a stereotypical female fashion ACTUALLY becomes female.

This is Grade A bonafide horseshit, but it is the tenet that lies at the very heart of transgenderism – by adopting they stereotypes of the opposite sex, you become that sex…   Fundamentally, the notion is nonsensical and at odds with the physical reality we all share.  But it is also here where the compelled speech becomes and issue for me and the rest of society.  You see, correctly observing reality is looked at as harmful and abusive because it does not align with the transgender individuals internalized notion of gender and of which sex they are.   The transgender movement argues that subjective feelings of individuals should override the rights of others in correctly identifying the physical reality that is before their very eyes.  A male is woman because he has feminine feelings and because he says so, and to contradict his gender delusion is to be bigoted and transphobic.

In polite society, being a bigot or phobic carries serious social consequences which is precisely why the transgender movement subverted these social norms to comport with their inner feelings of gender and the protection thereof.  Individuals in society must then carefully consider the social costs to disagreeing with transgender ideology which makes it harder to discuss and grapple with.  Sometimes it’s just easier and safer to go along with the gender deluded individual despite the damage being done to free speech and allegiance to material reality in society.  It is this chilling paradigm that I rally against.

If we value the liberal foundation that we have based our society on, transgender ideology and those who espouse it should not get a free pass.  Transgender ideology must be debated, argued, and its merits and faults examined closely in society.  Compelled speech to preserve gender-feelings that do not comport with reality is an unacceptable state of affairs.  The current imposition of transgender ideology is a clear and present safeguarding issue to women and children in our society because men who identify as women are gaining access to single sex spaces based on their say-so and that, if we value the safety of children and women, is a problem.