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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022

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For the folks here who talk heatedly about trans issues - I want to pose a thought experiment. Let's say it's the year 2300, and people can quickly, cheaply and painlessly switch their sex from male to female, and vice versa. There are no long term side effects, and it's as simple as going to buy a pill from the corner store.

On top of that, fertility issues have been handled, babies are grown/raised by artificial wombs and many different types of family structures are available with parents being able to choose what works best for their preference. Gender and sex can play a role if needed, but only for those who wish to have traditional families. It is not socially stigmatized to raise a family with two women, or two men, etc.

If this all were the case, would you have issues with people transitioning genders/sex still? If not, at what point along the line do you think it becomes okay to freely switch?

You can change your body by a pill bought in the corner store? Feck changing my gender (or is it my sex? still unclear as to which is meant), I want to be several inches taller, a heck of a lot thinner, much smarter, and with some other changes to my physiology and brain state (my life would have been a lot more successful if I were less cripplingly introverted and did not abhor social interaction, for instance). Just switching from "short dumpy female" to "short dumpy male" isn't at the races if I can have the Perfect Body and Perfect Brain merely with some simple chemical assistance!

You go do it! Why not?! I'm in the same exact damn boat.

But I am curious about your answer to the question.

If there were a perfect, consequence-free, totally reversible, easy method to switch sex, then the very notion of "transgender" could no longer exist, unless you got some hardcore theorists/activists who still insisted that this new method was about transexualism and not transgenderism, since gender is a construct of society, gendered roles, gender performance, yadda yadda yadda.

The interview with the Wi Spa person is fascinating in this light, since this is clearly a guy larping as a woman and yet he is insistent that he's some different kind of thing. I would ask you, in turn, suppose this perfect easy pill existed, but someone who claimed to be transgender refused to take it since they are already a woman (even if they still have a dick, etc)? Imagine trying to persuade "Ms." Merager here that he should take the pill and really be a woman, when he insists he already is and changing his body is transexual, not transgender:

Let’s back up a second. Should we be using male or female pronouns with you? How do you identify?

I’m very neutral, like non-binary, although I don’t like that word. I’m legally female. But I have facial hair. I have a penis. I have no breasts. I don’t have a feminine voice. I don’t wear makeup or dress up like a female. So imagine you’re a grocery store [clerk] and you’re bagging my groceries and you say, “Excuse me, sir . . . ” I mean, am I supposed to be offended? That’d be ridiculous. How would this person know? But technically, for legal terms, I am she/her. I put “female” on my driver’s license. But I’ve had to struggle my whole life fitting into traditional society.

And you sleep with women? You’re a female who has heterosexual sex with females?

I have heterosexual sex because my penis fits in a vagina. I don’t tell women I’m with that I’m transgender because that’s not my sex. So I’m not faking anything. Gender is internal, sex is external.

You mean Bamby Salcedo, president and CEO of the TransLatin@ Coalition, the largest trans-led organization in L.A.? She said in the story, “You’d think after getting arrested a bunch of times, she’d just change clothes in a stall.”

Right. So, in the article, she says she goes to Wi Spa three times a year and she gets naked in there and she never has a problem. So I spoke to Bamby Salcedo on the phone before the story came out. She admitted to me that she has boobs and she takes off her top but that she does not take off her bottoms because she has a penis. Nobody knows she’s transgender.

Nobody knows you’re transgender and you have a penis. What’s the difference? And why do you call Bamby a “supposed” transgender person?

We can go into that, but if she’s surgically [altered] parts of her body, that’s transsexual. I know that’s a controversy in and of itself, but I can explain that.

Are you saying that transitioning either hormonally or physically somehow disqualifies someone from being authentically transgender?

You have to understand gender identity. Everybody’s confusing your internal with your external. All these external people are doing what is being called transitioning. There’s no transition. That’s called deviation. I’m tired of that word, “transitioning.” It’s a fake word that people like Bamby use. The whole point is this is how you are born.

I also get the impression that our boy Darren figured out that doing time in a woman's prison instead of a man's prison would be way easier, and since all he had to do to legally become female was fill out a piece of paper (no need for hormones or surgery!), then why not?:

When did you get your driver’s license changed?

The license came in January 2019 [the month that the California Gender Recognition Act took effect]. But there’s a discrepancy in California, you can go through your doctor. But it’s very easy to get it. You can go in and sign a piece of paper. So I just waited until January to do it. And that was the first month that it was available. Basically, anybody could walk in and get one.

Was that something that was discussed with your therapist? How did you come to the decision to make the appointment to go in to get the driver’s license changed?

Our discussion basically started around April 2017. Between April 2017 and 2019, I had figured that … evaluating how I fit and how I had problems in prison….you come to the conclusion that makes more sense, where you’re gonna fit better in life.

And it makes sense, looking back throughout all years of your life. It’s not like we’re born and people try to indoctrinate you. Once you evaluate your life, it makes a lot of sense. Especially when you’re autistic and things are non-traditional anyway.

See? It's not his fault he's been wrongfully classed as a criminal, since he can't be expected to fit in with society's expectations about not masturbating in public or exposing himself around kids because he's autistic and transgender. In a sane society, grifters like this wouldn't be entitled to protected status as a persecuted minority, they would be recognised as opportunists and criminals. But then again, we're talking about California, not anyplace sane.

As an aside, if you're a trans activist who calls yourself Precious Child, then it's about mentally ill attention seeking. I'm so fed-up of the entire hot mess that I am now going to be blunt about that. Special snowflake pronouns, non-binary when it's very damn evident you're female (or male, see Sam Brinton) and fancy names like "Euphoria" or "Precious" while trying to dress like an anime character is not about "I am a woman in the wrong body", it's about "I am so desperate for any kind of attention that I will make an exhibition of myself to force a reaction, because even negative attention is better than none".

So, leaving all that insanity aside, and ignoring the religious angle: if there were this kind of easy, harm-free, reversible transition, then sure. Now you really can be a woman in a woman's body, or a man in a man's body, and I hope to God this will finally explode the notion that "being a woman is tight short dresses, high-heeled shoes, make-up, long hair, sparkles and pink, girly-girly stuff, and that horrible fake voice they use". Now that you're female down to your very chromosomes, you don't have to slap on makeup and hooker gear. Parents who groom their own kids into "oh yes she was always trans since she was a baby" won't have a lasting effect, as the kid can go back to their natal sex once old enough to get out from under Mommy's stage-mom thumb.

And the weirdoes who currently shelter under the trans umbrella will stand out even more, and finally may indeed be identified as people with mental disorders that need treatment, not "valid identity, deny this and you're committing violence, 41% suicide rate!"

Good write up. I wish I could engage I'm just mentally exhausted with this post at the moment hah.