Much as our esteemed psychological profession defines “gender dysphoria,” there’s also a phenomenon known as “species dysphoria.” I do understand that among mental-health practitioners it’s known as “Species Identity Disorder” (or “clinical lycanthropy”), but give it time. “Gender dysphoria” used to be “Gender Identity Disorder” (and should be “Sexual Identity Disorder”) until that was deemed “stigmatizing” to the disordered.
Whatever you call it, however, just as gender dysphoria involves the sense that one is stuck in the body of the “wrong” sex, species dysphoria involves the sense that one is stuck in the body of the “wrong” species. Examples of people claiming animal status were Texas girl “Wolfie Blackheart,” Norwegian woman “Nano” (who claimed she was a cat) and members of the groups known as “otherkin,” “therians” and “furries.”
What percentage of these people are just role-playing or looking for attention, and how many actually believe they’re animals, is not the point. It is, rather, that virtually all of us recognize this as, depending on the case, either a psychological or spiritual/cultural problem. We also know that you can’t be “trans-species” because changing your species is impossible; a corollary of this is that since trans-species creatures do not exist, they cannot be driven to extinction.
This comes to mind with yet another accusation that normal people are perpetrating a “trans genocide,” in this case because the Florida Department of Motor Vehicles will prohibit designer “genders” on driver’s licenses and will insist, once again, that only a person’s sex (i.e., male or female) be on them.
Yet in reality, the activists thus claiming have tipped their hand. That is, if we said that the racial descriptor “black” couldn’t be on government documents because being black is not a real physical state of being, the accusations would be, first, that the act would be discriminatory. The second accusation is to the point here, however:
We’d hear we were crazy for denying objective physical reality. Since black people exist, we could rightly be sized up for straitjackets.
So what’s telling about those I correctly call MUSS (Made-up Sexual Status, aka “transgender”) activists is that they, quite instinctively, don’t even think to accuse us of insanity.
They may say we’re bigots.
Or “transphobes.”
Or they may accuse us of “genocide.”
But telling us we’re simply crazy for denying an objective reality never occurs to the MUSS crew (though it may become a strategy if enough of them read this piece). This is because objectively speaking, we’re not denying an objective reality. They, not we, are the crazy ones.
To further illustrate MUSS activists’ tacit admissions, consider that unicorns do not exist except in the imagination. Therefore, they cannot be driven to extinction, except in a metaphorical sense of purging them from human imagination and the works (e.g., fiction, encyclopedias) in which they’re found.
Similarly, that MUSS individuals believe the mere denial of their existence constitutes “genocide” — the elimination of their group — is tacit acknowledgment that their group (as they demand it be conceptualized) exists only in the imagination.
This truth is acknowledged, too, in so many words. MUSS-enabling social scientists often point out that “sex” and “gender” are not synonymous, that while the former concerns biological status, “gender” (which shouldn’t be applied to humans, only words) is your perception of what you are. This is why scores of “genders” have already been “defined”: There can be as many perceptions as there are people.
But crazy is as crazy does. The problem here is that cultural insanity is contagious, with too many “normal” people, to a great extent, viewing MUSS individuals as they want to be considered and not as they should be. To wit:
We should not waver in embracing the truth that “trans” people do not exist.
Yes, people with psychological problems exist.
Social contagion exists.
Sexual fetishes such as autogynephilia exist.
But as ex-MUSS individual Alan Finch told The Guardian in 2004:
Their [the MUSS activists’] language is illusory. You fundamentally can’t change sex…. The surgery doesn’t alter you genetically. It’s genital mutilation. My “vagina” was just the bag of my scrotum. It’s like a pouch, like a kangaroo. What’s scary is you still feel like you have a penis when you’re sexually aroused. It’s like phantom limb syndrome. It’s all been a terrible misadventure. I’ve never been a woman, just Alan.
In reality, “transsexualism was invented by psychiatrists,” The Guardian wrote, summing up Finch’s warning.
And Finch’s observation about “illusory” language, do note, is something normal people must be mindful of. The side that defines the vocabulary of a debate, wins the debate. This is why I identify the individuals and agenda in question with the acronym “MUSS” — and it is why I implore you to join me in doing so. Using the sexual devolutionaries’ language enables their movement.
In truth, the MUSS agenda must be completely and totally eradicated. It’s one thing, and is a moral imperative, to treat people nobly enduring Sexual Identity Disorder with compassion and offer them counseling. It’s quite another to nod along and mainstream and normalize a delusion that is undermining our society and mutilating children’s grasp of reality (and sometimes their bodies). Such complicity in evil is evil.
Unfortunately, this counsel bumps up against that very conservative instinct to be “reasonable” and “compromise,” to say, “Live whatever life you want; just don’t shove it in my face — and leave the kids out of it.” Yet as I think C.S. Lewis put it, this is like having a fleet of ships and saying that you don’t care how they function as long as they don’t crash into each other. Of course, though, if they don’t function properly, they may not be able to avoid crashing into each other.
So it is here. The typical conservative appeal to the MUSS crew is like saying, “You can be mentally ill, just not too mentally ill. You can jump off that cliff — just be sure to stop halfway down so you don’t land on a child’s head.”
Apropos to this, G.K. Chesterton had something very profound to say about this attitude of compromise in the Illustrated London News in 1924. “The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives,” he wrote. “The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types — the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins.”
King Solomon was not making a serious proposal when he offered to split the baby; he was cleverly revealing a poseur. Are we just poseurs to principle? If not, we can’t try to split the baby of sanity, but must slay the demon child of sexual devolutionary delusion.
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Copyright 2024. Selwyn Duke. All rights reserved.
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