People who might accept the framework you propose, as I do, balk when we get to what’s “back of behind” all this: the transhuman movement, run by billionaires with all the políticos in their pockets and pharma in their portfolios, with the urban land, the corporate rental ownership, the farms and heritage seeds, the laws and policies, the gold and money and aaaall the real power. Even with my reading and experience with all facets of the scenarios you detail, I still wonder, “Can this really be true?” when I delve into that movement and connect the dots.
This is made even more difficult because so many who are being used to promote the furthest left’s agenda have no idea, and no connection, to this much more hidden (for now) influencing factor. Now as in the past, the useful idiots are just tools, and do not know it. Any discussion of this over-arching campaign will get you pegged a conspiracy theorist, a madman, worse.
I can’t say as I’d blame anybody for coming to that conclusion, because it seems mad to me and I already kind of believe it!
Did you stop short of this final piece in the puzzle because you’re not convinced of it, or because you wanted to argue the most observable, demonstrable level before going on to the far greater challenge (to me, anyway, as the rest makes perfect sense) of what’s behind it all? Or perhaps you reject the notion of a really weird and spooky-as-f**k transhuman Valhalla somewhere, hard at work on this? (If so I hope you’re right.)
I’d love your thoughts on this, and if you agree there are some wicked minds at work on plans to change the course of our species (which makes me feel insane to even articulate) I hope you’ll pen an essay with the same great clarity and purpose as you did here. If you don’t agree, I’m eager to know why: I’d like to be talked out of it myself.
Because if what I read is true, even if we can defeat what is most evidently wrong and redirect our country back to sanity and revitalize the American project, we have the battle for our existence still ahead.
I wish I could talk you out of it. I really do. I fear, however, that you are correct.
I wrote about this aspect of what is going on because I know more about it, and because I am sure that it exists. The history of the left is real. The left's incrementalist effort to undermine and take over the West is real. The "conspiracies" associated with those efforts (Soviet-funded operations, e.g.) are real.
What you are talking about is a level up from all that. I believe it is real, but I don't have as much knowledge and we don't have as much clear evidence. My suspicion is something like this:
The leftist aspect (which I describe in the piece) is a long-standing phenomenon. The globalist/transhumanist aspect is newer (or, at least, it was much more well-hidden in the past). The ideologies and goals of leftism and this other phenomenon overlap, but this other phenomenon may now be engineering things, and taking advantage of the movement leftism has built, for its own purposes. The power that leftism has built is broad. The power that these creepy globalist billionaire types have built is extremely concentrated.
That is roughly what I believe to be the case, based on what we are seeing. But I don't know enough to make any dispositive claims about it.
I do a little speculating on the subject here, in a piece in which I deconstruct the reactions I have observed to "the regime" over the last three years:
You mention money, and I do touch on that aspect here: https://christophercook.substack.com/p/the-trans-industrial-complex-is-a . However, I believe that you are primarily speaking of something even bigger that that. But, money is always a part of it—they need resources in order to maintain power.
Bottom line: I definitely agree that there is something weird and spooky-as-heck going on.
Jun 13, 2023·edited Jun 13, 2023Liked by Christopher Cook
When I first started reading what Jennifer Bilek (and others) were writing about transhumanism being behind the transgender movement, I thought it was too kooky because transhumanism is so kooky. But Bilek's meticulous investigative journalism really seems irrefutable. [For those not familiar with the work of Bilek and others, please see and subscribe to https://www.the11thhourblog.com/ ]
However, in my lesbian radical feminist organizing, I do not typically initially refer people to her work because to do so would make me and what I am saying sound too whacky! Too much like a "conspiracy theorist". And yet these billionaires really are engaging in a conspiracy! I do mention the role that the billionaire autogynephiles have and are having in bribing universities and other institutions, including the Democratic Party, to promote transgender and postmodern ideology, but stop short of getting into transhumanism because it is so unbelieveable at first glance. Who could be so crazy as to think that women can be replaced when it comes to human reproduction? Well, some billionaire males think just that and are putting their money into making it happen.
Most people can see that the denial of the binary nature of sex is ridiculous. Nevertheless, they may still have sympathy for those who are "dysphoric" and apparently uncomfortable with pressures to conform to our culture's prescriptive sex-stereotypes. Most people know that our culture's notions about "masculine" and "feminine" are too rigid. And many people are outraged that men are now being able to access women's sports, prisons, shelters, changing rooms and restrooms, and understand that predatory men are taking advantage of sympathy for the boys and men who might really be uncomfortable with their sexed bodies and rigid notions of social roles.
We can stop what these autogynephilic, misogynist billionares are trying to do without trying to first make people understand that transhumanism is behind their efforts. People can better understand how wealthy men with sexual fetishes might really be pushing what we are seeing with children and other vulnerable young people, when it comes to both "gender affirmation" and "minor attracted persons". Everyone knows predatory men exist and that many of them are pedophiles.
As always, we have to start where people are at. Some people will be amenable to understanding the role that the pursuit of transhumanism is having, but most people will oppose what is happening without having to understand that ultimate threat.
On a more granular level, this interview of formerly woke Keri Lake by Peter Boghossian on how Keri (and others) were/are drawn into the woke movement, what keeps them stuck in the cult and how Keri got out has really made me understand how otherwise highly intelligent people are caught up in the woke cult. As you will see, Peter is trying to figure out how to "scale up" getting people to stop being enamored of the cult. It was really eye-opening for me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFGGRFiJLrs
It is also clear to me that these transhumanists are not really "Left" at all. They have co-opted people on the Left. There are also right-wing, left-wing and apolitical autogynephiles, too. Sexual fetishes are not partisan! But all of this is misogyny at its worst.
The major corporations and medical providers that are supporting and profitting from "gender affirmation" are not Leftist, either! There are many moving parts here.
So much here. We live in fascinating, terrifying times.
I am familiar with Bilek's name and the subject of her work, but that is all. I am sure she has discovered terrible things. Nothing would surprise me.
I think your approach (not telling people things they are not ready to hear) is wise. Tell them what they are ready for, push the envelope a little, and then wait for them to catch up and then tell them some more. That is how it has to be.
What drives me crazy is the way that (almost) everyone seems to think that because they have an idea, they must force their idea upon all of us. "I think it is possible to create an artificial womb" becomes "We should engineer society so that all babies are born in artificial wombs." This is the dark side of the ultra-social nature of the human species—every idea, every solution, every plan ends up being collectivized and forced on everyone.
I also have thought about the other side of the notion of replacing women whenever I see the t-shirt that says "The future is female." What does that mean? Will human males be kept underground and their sperm harvested at regular intervals to keep reproduction going, but otherwise not be allowed out? How about "The future is human"? No one ought to be replaced. People should be free to do as they wish.
If people are allowed to be free—not engineered, not forced—then things will unfold naturally. Most people will be heterosexual. A small percentage will be homosexual. The vast majority will be content with their biological sex. A tiny fraction (.001–.003 %) will have dysphoria. (I have someone close to me who fits that category—I know what the real thing looks like, as opposed to indoctrination and social contagion.) A small percent of children will have gender confusion, roughy 90% of which will clear up by adulthood, and 80% of them will be homosexual. (That was the case until the left decided to mutilate all those children by telling them they must be trans—in essence, eliminating gays and lesbians from the population!)
If people are allowed to be free, then people will choose the life that suits them. Yes, there are correlations based on sex. Men and women will gravitate towards certain types of work and activities, correlated with sex-typical characteristics. But those correlations are not 100%, or even close. Usually they tend to be more like .6—so, e.g., per Jordan Peterson, 6 out of 10 women will be higher in trait-agreeableness than the average man. But that means that 4 out of 10 are not! People are individuals. We should let people be what they are. We should let things unfold naturally. If that means choosing a "typical" role or lifestyle, we should not denigrate it. If that means being or choosing something that is "atypical," great. Let it be. Enjoy the differences. We must stop making human society into a phenomenon where we're trying to force things on each other.
I am glad that the news is getting out that autogynephilia is at work in some of this. I myself am just learning about it. The fact that they seem to need an audience of children is soooooo creepy. And the fact that the left is fueling this, and the outright assault on women—and that they have the power to push it all and make it stick, and so many are going along with it—is horrifying.
Transhumanism—again, why does it seem like transhumanists won't be content to simply do it for themselves—that it has to be "the future for all humanity"? Let people be. Let people choose. And leave our children alone.
I agree that at the top levels, transhumanists—and indeed, the globalist/billionaire cabal and WEF types—are not left in the classic sense. They are piggybacking. Like some sci-fi parasite that takes control of a host body, I believe they are attempting to use the phenomenon of international leftism to gain more power.
(If you and I have a disconnect on this, it may be because you are thinking of the left from the rank-and-file perspective, and I am seeing it as an aggregated ideological-historical-political phenomenon.)
I would enjoy watching the Smith/Boghossian interview. I like stories of people leaving the left! Having been raised on the left (https://christophercook.substack.com/p/my-ideological-journey-left-to-right), lived in the Pioneer Valley in Massachusetts (including hanging out a lot at Hampshire College), lived in Los Angeles, etc., I am familiar with what it's like. Every story of departure from it that I have read so far reads like departure from an angry, intolerant, unhappy cult.
Finally…at one point, many years ago in Los Angeles, most of my friends and social circle were lesbians. I owe them a lot, really. They befriended me and took care of me—feeding me lots of bacon while I was trying to survive on a union extra's "salary," hanging out, having fun, having me over for holidays when otherwise I would have been alone, etc. We have not talked in ages, and I do know my politics have moved further right while theirs have gone the opposite direction. But I wonder what they would think of everything that is going on today, with the transing, invasion of women's spaces and sports, etc. Well, I would not feel right even sending them a note to ask unless the note is accompanied by a truckload of bacon and brunch food. Like I said—I really do owe them!
"I think it is possible to create an artificial womb" becomes "We should engineer society so that all babies are born in artificial wombs."
Leftist confusion of "IS" with "OUGHT" - a fatal, deep flaw. This remains unexamined by many in the "disaffected liberals" crowd. The objects of the analysis may adjust, but the very deep heuristic remains in place.
Dec 26, 2023·edited Dec 26, 2023Liked by Christopher Cook
Absolutely.
in some cases it is a conflation so off kilter it is hard for us to wrap our heads around it; if you point out that something occurs naturally in trying to find the source of the problem, oh lets say male on female rape, that it is biologically based, and perhaps sharp punishments should be utilized, a feminist may counter with "Oh its natural, so its good? Is that what youre saying?" setting you up as a "rape apologist" because you acknowledge natural forces causing something. This has its own name, the Naturalistic Fallacy, but I dont know the name for a strawman false accusation of using a Natural Fallacy. I suppose we need a name for it these days. They project a naturalistic fallacy attribution on those who dont even make it, WHILE positing the source of the naturalistic behavior is "false consciousness" and cant be elimatied with real, appropriate criminal justice, but rather "counseling and social justice" which means letting them go and commmit again.
Its bad out there. Their brains are really pickled in a way that you dont see until its too late.
The more general example of the IS/OUGHT confusion is because one "feelz" that it should be so, it actually IS.
This is one of the many reasons why I have , for all intents and purposes, become an “anarchist.” I no longer wish to live in a system in which one-size-fits-all solutions are imposed upon me through violence, and in which my fate is in the hands of people like those whom you herein describe.
Dec 26, 2023·edited Dec 26, 2023Liked by Christopher Cook
When you review Bilek otherwise excellently sourced and incisive ouvre, you may detect several strains and key concepts: straight male MtF fetishists are driving the trans movement, from historical cradle to immanent grave, "Capitalism" writ large is bad (with little differentiation between corrupt monopolisitc crony capitalism and free markets) and that transgenderism being akin to transhumanism (truly a revelatory concept for me and immanently sense making) are all, at their core "misogynistic".
If you are dipping into TERF space, you may find that its chaotic confusion is as "whattaboutist", atheist, anti-science and in denial about the excesses of leftism/feminism as any woke space, with one exception; trans bad. All the remaining leftist talking points are left in place and bolstered.
TERFs, still, famously deny any differences between men and women in any area except the body below the neck; evolutionary psychology is as haram with them as it was 30 years ago in the left vs Sociobiology wars.
The silence about Marxism's and feminism's role is deafening.
Generally agreed re: the TERF phenomenon. However, I think it has awakened many to the general insanity of leftism, leaving them more open to seeing the rest of leftism’s insanity. IOW, this phenomenon is still playing out, and I believe that this may be the first step in a journey away from the left for many of them.
Dec 26, 2023·edited Dec 26, 2023Liked by Christopher Cook
One quibble here; the unfortunate targeting of effective non-feminist anti-trans campaigners by TERFs. Megan Murphy is continuing a several year long whisper campaign against BillBoard Chris (yes, the ususal "rapiness" stuff), TERFs participated in the pile on of Jordan Peterson (Megan was on the dias next to him in Candian parliament, ironic), TERFs have done such horrible things against Kellie Jae Minchul that she no longer calls herself a feminist, and has said that they have treated her far worse than trans activists and LibFems ever did.
At first I thought the problem with TERFs was the residual feminism, but I took it for granted that that came with the territory and so be it, I praised them for their work. Then, on TERF Twitter, real time conferences and the like, came to understand they were fighting an illogical rear guard action, not just for "feminism", but for "gender abolition" (denying the remaining sex differences they couldnt quite, just yet, get their heads around), and then further, for general marxist principles. None of this was a surprise, I accepted it, but there was a further black pill: they were actively handicapping some of the best and most effective anti-trans campaigners. It wasnt enough to let them run in their own lane, TERF feminsts were using the banner of antitrans to continue hammering away at abortion til 40 weeks, denigration of men as a sex class etc., but most egregiously, engaging in the ususal character assasination of key anti-trans activists that, if anything, on blanace, bolstered the trans position.
This is not just theory but observation; participation in an online Slack group for the LGBAlliance required that I affirm a women (lesbian) ONLY leadership, erasing men from this effort, despite purporting to be "LGB", and unrestricted abortion access up until birth. Humorously, in retrospect, there was a dust up about whether the effort should be pro-Palestine or Pro-Israel (this was 5 years ago!)
This was a sad realization that deep leftist thought patterns and ways of operating were alive and well and didnt just explain the realtive ineffectiveness of TERF efforts but sadly highlighted the positbility that they were actually making things worse. I know, forbidden thoughts in "ex-liberal" space.
I am in my 50s, and I began the process of questioning leftism when I was in my teens, so if you are referring to this as an ex-liberal space, I would say that is inaccurate. I have been away from the left since the early 90s.
In fact, I became stridently anti-leftist long before I even understood what the “opposing” ideology(s) were all about. I started to see glimpses of the rot as early as age 13, and then in drips and drabs for the next decade after.
If anything, I have recently been trying to dial back my intense anti-leftism (at least in public expressions thereof) in hopes of finding common ground on some other issues. And all this stuff you are saying isn’t helping 🤣🤣🤣 But the truth is the truth.
Dec 26, 2023·edited Dec 26, 2023Liked by Christopher Cook
100%. Trans Red Pilled me to the left. It also Red Pilled me to the conclusion that TERFist feminism isnt the answer. So I waited, and low and behold, more robust factions have made major strides against trans. Many TERFs have tossed off the faminist moniker (Kellie-Jae Minchul) and alliances are shifting all over the place. Fascinating times.
my fear is that in not examining the core deficits of feminist ideology, the left, or even the center will fall into another trap. Auron MacIntyre and Neema Parvini have a running battle, in good humor, about whether the "woke will be put away". Auron says no, Neema, yes. I split the difference: trans and BLM will be allowed to slide to some degree, tho never retracted completely, but femininsm of a bland 2nd wave sort will be cemented firmly into centrist thought and even on the right to some degree, leaving a Marxist beach head, once again in the center of the public square.
You have a more detailed understanding of this particular area, and of the players involved, than I. But what you say/predict certainly sounds plausible.
It's beginning to dawn on most people that it doesn't come down to left/right, conservative/liberal, republican/democrat. Whoever embraces these ideas as a group, have been bought off or infiltrated and subverted, but there are many on the opposing side, who also have been bought off, but don't entirely buy into the ideology, and stay silent. Listen to any Yuval Harari speech and there can be no doubt as to the transhumanist movement. He's positively reverential when referring to it and utterly disdainful when speaking of "some nebulous God in the clouds" and fairy tales of Jesus, as the alternative. Those in the WEF, UN, WHO etc, who push us toward these weird ideologies, make no mistake, are psychopaths. They see themselves as godlike and will achieve it through the marvel of technology and mad science. In the meantime, they take pleasure in their power and manipulating the masses and creating the world as they see fit. Political parties matter not. Only evil and it's overarching influence.
Well, even though there seems to be a growing global awareness as to what these people are up to, we need to coalesce as one voice and in numbers, in order to let them know we're onto them. Imagine the power we would have generated if the Canadian Truckers coordinated with the farmers in The Netherlands and Germany, and the protesters in Brazil, as well as the protesters in America on January 6th. This is what they fear...our strength in numbers. Without that happening (and it will, eventually, but the longer we wait, the more harm will be done) they will be their own worst enemy, as well as time to show none of their dire warnings will come to pass. (I wanted to say "the passage of time", but Kamala has ruined that for me.) As it is, they've had to reword their proclamations so many times since they settled on climate as their global tool, during their Club of Rome days. With each passing day, their absurdity and psycopathy becomes more apparent. Allow them enough rope to hang themselves.
Just when I get settled down, you pop off with more food for thought! Do you think they really have that much power? They've been wreaking a lot of havoc over the years (centuries, really), but now that more attention is being drawn to their dirty deeds, I wonder if they can get away with as much. Did you see those videos of Javier Milei at Davos? Awesome. And even better, Kevin Roberts, also at Davos? It was a beautiful thing.
Many copes here to defelct attention from leftist agitation. The strands Cook elucidates here are very real and the driving force. Late entries into the march, such as BigPharma transgenderism, and the corporate adoption of leftist tropes (in response to Occupy Wall Street: Green, trans, feminism, etc.) are just that, and not core causal forces.
I agree. Though I did just get a comment overnight that reminded me of one other notion/theory: other empires have seen a feminization of men and blurring of sex distinctions right before they fell. (Greece and Rome being the biggest examples) I wonder if there is also something there…
Absolutely. Paglias formation is a crucial piece. Another arrow pointing towards trans.
The world is complex. I see theoretical constructions about reality as shafts of light through a crystal (the "world") , that when turned in the hand, refracts differently, depending on the color of the light. Multifactorial exposition. This is a Hindu/Buddhist analytical frame, as is also the "Net of Indra" that positis a similar concept of multifractorial causation.
Extremely well articulated and you hit the nail on the head. Perhaps he did't mention the multipolar global *agenda* 😬 because it's a whole book, rather than a short aticle.
You are absolutely on the right trail of breadcrumbs looking at the big picture and the powerful entities behind these movements and ideologies. Thanks for your thoughtful and intuitive insights. We have to stop with the "conspiracy theory" labeling stuff. There are conspiracies which abound to be sure, but most aren't made up by q anon and alt-right nationalist groups. They are mocking us while flaunting it right in our face and shouting "conspiracy" when we point it out.
Agreed. We are living in mad times, and we are all just trying to get a handle on exactly what is going on and how deep the rabbit hole goes. This is one of the ways that "they" are able to succeed: The rabbit hole is so deep, with both interconnected tunnels and blind alleys, that it is hard to find one's way to the truth. Meanwhile, the people who don't want to look, or don't even know that the rabbit hole exists in the first place, call us "conspiracy theorists" just for noticing that things don't seem quite right.
The sad truth is—we may never be able to know for sure, or to prove dispositively, exactly what is going on. And even if we had dispositive proof, a large swath of humanity will always refuse to believe. It is the way of things. Yet, there are always some whose eyes are sufficiently open—and at least we have each other, and can explore the possibilities with one another.
Dec 26, 2023·edited Dec 26, 2023Liked by Christopher Cook
Unpopular opinion:
Intellectually-minded people (All of you lovely Substackers, for example, Of Course) love to construct grand theories to rationalize base human behavior - their own and others'.
Soviets/CCPs motivated by Russian/Chinese nationalism and greed always justify(ied) their actions with Communism, Americans with Manifest Destiny and Exceptionalism.
Socialists rationalize their envy with altruism.
Capitalists rationalize their abuses of power with Darwinism.
Spoiled, over-privileged rich kids created Critical Theory and Queer Theory to rationalize "I get to do whatever I want, with whoever I want and no one gets to hold me accountable, set boundaries or tell me 'No.'"
EVERYONE, on all sides, convinces themselves that their opponents' various individual self-interested actions are part of a massive secret nefarious conspiracy. If there is a dot somewhere, they will connect it to something, be assured. THEIR theory is genius of course, but everyone else's is insane. Of course.
Everyone attributes to conspiracy what is adequately explained by typical human selfishness, mistakes, incompetence and ass-covering, to paraphrase the old saying.
The reality is a lot more mundane, a lot more boring: people really are the same wherever you go. They act selfishly, predictably, in their own little sphere of influence, in parallel with or in opposite parallel or at converging or conflicting angles with other people acting selfishly and predictably in their own little spheres of influence. It is useful to point out the patterns in their actions, but a pattern isn't a conspiracy. It's evidence of our shared human nature.
Even if we stipulate, for the sake of argument, that people are motivated solely in the base fashion(s) you lay out, we still have the problem of how they justify their actions.
So, let us take the case of Marxism. This ideology, and the offshoots it spawned, murdered a nine-digit figure of humans in the 20th century, and they did it in pursuit of, or at least with the excuse that they were in pursuit of, a particular set of ideological principles.
This ideology created cohesion, energy, etc., which allowed a level of destruction that would not have been possible in its absence. In its absence, all you would have is disorganized selfish crazies. As such, they cannot do a fraction of the damage that the organized ideology can.
Jun 13, 2023·edited Jun 20, 2023Liked by Christopher Cook
Peter Boghossian is trying to figure out how to get people caught up in the cult of woke to break out of it. This interview with Keri Smith is a "must view" if you want to understand how intelligent people get drawn into the cult and what makes them leave it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFGGRFiJLrs
Interesting analysis, and one I did not see. You've drawn a nice tight circle around the fissioning mechanic of Leftist victimhood campaigns. "Yes, the Workers are not rising up! We need more unhappy marginalized groups breeding in darkness like cockroaches to continue the fight, and degeneracy comes with God-hatred built right in!"
Yup. I studied the history of the left in some depth while working on my book, and it all began to make sense. And ultimately, when EVERYTHING is stripped away—the envy, the narcissism, the drive for power, etc.—at the root of it is all the simple drive to take things from other people. That's it. It's the human equation, modern-style. How do I get what I want? Persuade and produce or coerce and take? They have all chosen coerce-and-take as their primary strategy.
Interesting take on the next frontier of "Human Equality" going past transgenderism.
Height and genetic legacy will come under scrutiny.
The only way transhumanis can take this on, is, of course the elephant in the room; not just loading brains onto silicon or life extension, but eugenics.
Dec 26, 2023·edited Dec 26, 2023Liked by Christopher Cook
"Rank and filers, high on the left’s virtue-crack, can protest this characterization all they want, but it doesn’t make it any less true."
At first glance, I read "crack" not as the cooked down methamphetamine derivative, but the gluteal cleft...... lol. Placing the rest of leftists at the anus.
This essay has it right. There is a plethoral of fueling influences at the street level. Social media and the related narcissism epidemic, crucial in the vast sea of NPC "support XYZ!" activists is a required testbed/cess pool. BigPharma plays a role; an angle grasped desperately by feminists to once again blame "Patriarchy", "Men" and "Capitalism". Jennifer Bilek, an excellent reporter on this angle, is championed hard by the feminists with amnesia about their former war to abolitish "gender"; which back then wasnt antitrans, but protrans, in that it sought to explicitly dissolve the "sex and gender binary" (we see a remnant here in the newly coined "non-binaries").
So many other factors play a role, but in the underlying, driving forces, this essay nails it.
Dec 26, 2023·edited Dec 26, 2023Liked by Christopher Cook
The role of Radical Feminism in creating the trans movement is overlooked by many TERFs. "Abolishing (Sex and) Gender" was a core concept. Many casual observers during the 2nd Wave thought this was just "Women can do anything men can (if Patriarchy is smashed) and should be allowed to". I support the second phrase but am luke warm about the first as an overarching truth. While this sounds like it is just "Equality", there is the leveling "Equity" baked in. Certainly in the practice of medicine and law, and other careers, for example, this is true; many women do as well or better than many men. But for family formation, career preferences and various other ways of being, it may not be (for most women). Also, it is all muddied by the conflation of "some", "all", "most" as modyfiers before any immutable group, in making generalizations. Something that feminism pioneered for sex, as we all, as a nation walked away from fuch formulations when placed before the words "black". "Blacks are... XYZ" as a formulation is forbidden on the left, and yet we continually hear "Women are....", and "Men are...." without nuance, from ALL feminists, TERFs included.
To bring it back to the point, feminism was key in introducing the concept that not just "gender" (career, dress, roles) were nonbinary and "social constructions" but that sex itself was as well; women were warriors, women were hunters, women would lap men in athletics, given enough time (all conceptions linked to biologicval sex, not just "gender"). Thats the theoretical.
In the empiral sphere, anyone who has spent time in (formerly) LGB space back in the 90s knew of the fetishist autogynophile MtFs, the occassional "true trans" gay men who transitioned to female, but also, many many lesbian feminist FtMs who justified their transition not with fetishism or in response to societal homophobia, but with feminist doctrines about any/all sex differences being "socially constructed". I'll leave aside the internal contradiction about using surgeries and medicine to "abolish" something that is supposedly not "real". (I have long tired of the leftist take down of critiques because, when elucidating their contradictions, one gets the response : "that doesnt make sense"; ahem, exactly, it does not make sense).
There was an entire FtM subculture constructed around peak feminist ideas culminating in something of a FtM "craze", unseen from the outside, but real enough that it earned a plot line in the first iteration of "The L Word", a TV series about the lesbian community. An emphasis on BigPharma, autogynophiliacs and the like is fine, but when coupled with no mention of the excesses and antiscience "theories" of the 2nd and 3rd waves of feminism, it looks like just more of the same: extreme leftism devoid of empirical evidence, misandry and a denial of womens agency (specifically in fostering the trans movement). I prefer a balanced approach that considers the missteps and sometimes deliberate animus of all parties involved, regardless of sex.
I am aware that many feminists pushed back even then to this phenomenon. I applaud them (this is illustrated as well in "The L Word" where Pam Greer's character, interestingly a straight woman, eloquently parses the difference between sex and gender, when she tells a young FtM that she can be who she wants to be without transitioning). However, the complete abrogation by even these women within feminism to address key flaws in their ideology, made this a fruitless effort.
There is little here for me to dispute; by and large, I agree.
Each one of us is fractionally responsible for the fruit of any ideological tree to which we contribute soil or sun. Thus, yes, even though TERFs are now departing in droves, radical feminism played a huge role in bringing about this phenomenon. They have to own that, just as each of us must own the ideologies to which we have provided our personal fuel. But…the fact that they are now departing in droves is an excellent start!
Dec 26, 2023·edited Dec 26, 2023Liked by Christopher Cook
I actually don't hold any member of a group responsible for the sins of the group. I'd no more blame men, or women or even feminists, per se, as the sole group responsible for trans.
But I will call out all feminists currently for continuing to adhere to the ideas that got us here, while they retroactively and repeatedly blame "men" as a class.
Respectfully, the only idea they are departing is that transwomen are women. That's it. Not a single other idea.
I understand. I do not hold people accountable for things they did not do. So, for example, I do not hold anyone living accountable for the sins of their ancestors. Doing so is, in fact, monstrous.
Similarly, I do not believe in any form of group guilt. That is not what I am proposing.
Rather, what I am saying is that we are responsible for the ideas we contribute to, and the effect of those ideas. Let me provide a concrete example, and ascribe some of those sort of responsibility to myself…
In the early 2000s, I was what you might call a mainstream conservative. (Details here, and in the previous parts of the series: https://christophercook.substack.com/p/my-ideological-journey-from-left-to-right-part-4) As such, I (somewhat reflexively) supported the policies of Bush 43. This includes, to my great shame, the second Gulf War. I cast votes and made arguments on behalf of these ideas and policies, and I must thus consider myself fractionally responsible for them. It is not the same kind of responsibility that one would have for a more direct and specific action, but it is a kind of responsibility nonetheless.
I hope that explanation clarified the notion sufficiently.
And to your final point…I understand. I think you are right. However, anyone can change, and if they have seen the light on that one point, at least some of them may do so on another and then another. I have seen it happen with people, so I know it is possible. I am hoping it happens much more!
Fun reading, but I have ask about the total absence of “left wing” organized labor in your historical narrative. Neither Marxist nor Elitist, it’s been wildly successful in a number of areas of both protecting labor, and (in my personal experience in Europe) aligning the interests of labor and “management” in mutually beneficial directions. In some areas, unions have become somewhat sclerotic - teacher’s unions seem to have no concept of what their wages should be, there is an unreal shortage of transportation labor which unions don’t seem to be facilitating recruitment for...
I don’t mean to be condescending but I’m also probably twice your age and I’ve seen this movie before. Trans fits into a very different schema from “leftist” thought, and oppression narratives. I have seen what I’ll call a trans (I’ll call androgynous, unisex, gender-bending, genderfuck, transsexual, transvestite, treansgender presentation a single manifestation) or social wave about every 15 years since I was a child, which is actually just an extension of a late 19th century phenomenon in Western culture - here’s a sampler.
Consider Marlene Dietrich in an albino male gorilla costume (“Blond Venus”) and then in Male Tuxedo (“Morocco”) is one manifestation, along with cross-dressing Cabaret (Weimar Germany) all in the early 30’s. Mid 40’s you had popular “Pony Ballets” and more in the USO during WWII. The 60’s ushered in the “Peacock Revolution” with men wearing “feminine” (and considered outrageous) prints, and of course women adopting men’s pants wholesale; “Crisis of Masculinity”; “Some Like it Hot”; “Unisex”.
Glam Rock” in the 70’s was ubiquitous (and also revival of 30’s Cabaret style - there’s also a supercycle of 60 years from trans chic to retro). The 70’s also brought Trans visibility from Renee Richards and others, Mick Jagger in a dress (“Performance”) and Diane Keaton in a suit (“Annie Hall” 60 years after Dietrich). “Divine”.
The 80’s New Wave/New Romantic looks - generally favoring heavy makeup on men and the usual reprisal of “unisex” fashion, and women with shoulders wider than men’s (think Grace Jones and “Dynasty” Joan Collins. Klaus Nomi’s look from the early 80’s is the basis for seemingly all current TV drag (30+ years later). The nadir was the masculine-parody “Village People” rebranding as “New Romantics” with some eye make-up. Boy George. “Tootsie”.
The 90’s ushered more of the same, or even more indirect, or overtly trans (“Silence of the Lambs”). Drag mainstreams (“Ru Paul”), men wearing nail polish in grunge (Cobain) - sort of setting a stage for... 2000
The current century ushered in more trans, labeled frankly as drag or trans - “Trans America”, “Hedwig”, “Kinky Boots”, among other films, and to me the key “Billy Elliot” (more in a moment), RuPaul TV. “Billy Elliot” was a major film with a boy in a rough-and-tumble working class context being bullied for pursuing ballet - a “feminine” career. That was new.
All preceding “gender nonconforming” depictions were adults. I had a conversation with Trans Activist Lynn Conway (whom I had for a speaking engagement) around 2002/3 where I got (1) an explanation about how wonderful Puberty Blockers would be (2) transvestite was actually transsexual (3) trans were up to 3% of the population. Lynn Conway is not a Left-Wing Marxist with a background in postmodern structuralism (80’s, I had wide reading in postmodern “philosophy” not Lynn).
Lynn was at the front of what I would call “scientism” in trans which is wholly new, neither Marxist nor Leftist, nor “oppressed”. Androgynous, unisex, drag... “drag” like “gay” is easy to think of, easy words and concepts which, crucially, didn’t mask reality. Ordinary people didn’t speak of “fetishistic teansvesticism”, “Auto-gynephilia”, “sex-reassignment surgery”, but the 2000’s ushered in a vastly expanded range of bullshit.
We’re in a peak cycle of “dysphoria”, “people with a cervix” (as 20 people where or what a cervix is), a vast array of pseudo-scientific “scientism” specifically arranged, intentionally arrayed to sound authoritative not by Elites, but by street kids. “Gender” and “gender identity” are now in a 60-year supercycle retro peak (it’s that old) reaching its nadir in meaninglessness with “fluid” continuously varying definitions (gender isn’t fluid, fluids are; gender doesn’t flow, it is a grammatical structure).
Pronoun neutering has been attempted for hundreds of years. English, as an almost completely gender-neutral modern language, will hang onto gendered pronouns for a long time to come, because there would be literally no other way to gauge effects of sex in literature and common conversation. In gendered languages pronoun gender is redundant, in English it is singular.
The focus on children’s genitals, simultaneously masked by scientism, is an amazingly new phenomenon which I cannot find any parallel in any right or left social movement you mention - only relatively old religious contexts (ritual genital mutilation as male or female circumcision derived from Semitic ritual; castration in Catholic music; ritual neutering and mastectomy in Russia; kidnapping / neutering in India) or political - emasculation in China imperial households; or purely social - various genital mutilation scattered elsewhere (Australian aboriginal penis splitting (“subcision”).
Scientism and child genital mutilation. I cannot trace that back to Foucault or Derrida, I can find antecedents in pseudo-science or scientism, and I can’t find antecedents in historic trans movements.
Your comment has so much food for thought that I am hesitant to offer any quick answers. I will be considering your thoughts for a while to come.
I believe that the explanation I have offered is a large part of the picture, but you are correct that it cannot be the whole of it.
I recall recently hearing someone (Camille Paglia??) mention that statues in Greece and Rome began to fall in sexual dimorphism (more androgynous men, especially) as their empires declined (and, obviously, that the statues represented a real-world trend). Could it be that this is a pattern, and that we are experiencing it not only for the American empire, but for the period of Western dominance in general?
And could that combine with other explanations for a broader explanation of the scientism, the late-stage craziness, the addition of children in the list of targets, etc.?
It would be fun to talk 1:1 instead of a public forum sometime - you’re well-reasoned and fun to read. Camille Paglia is part of a Sontag / Paglia / Butler / Leibowiz sort of “thought” - Fran Leibowiz and Sontag as the real writers, one incredibly funny one incredibly smart; Paglia unintentionally funny and Butler unintentionally stupid, sort of the Bizarro versions of their dual. "Sexual Balonae" and its neverending girls are pink boys are blue singsong with departures into fantasy (Astrology is real) has subterranean (a favorite French intellectual model) or was it cthonic or mythopoetic connections er... To Foucault via "The History of Sex".
There's a Roman fear of men who are passive sexually - "Mollis" or soft (think of an oyster or mollusc) was somewhat equivalent to "faggy" though Mollis survives also as a gay slur through the centuries - Molly House, Molly Coddle, Molly, or "Mary". Think of calling someone "soft on crime" (now a Postmodern flourish: ...) as opposed to "Hard/on Crime" (the forward slash implied single word was a Sontag feature, and sexual "edgy" byplay, men having a hardon for something - with a parenthetical self-referential aside like this) - well we're back to effeminacy and softness as the end of the world, a Republican (Roman/Americam, Paglia representing the Cthonic Connection between empires) dire warning. Empires don't collapse because of androgyny, they collapse because they can't be sustained economically, generally the result of disease and/or environment conspiring to deatabilize or "Steven Gould" punctuate an equilibrium of ecologically stable "Red Queen" competition.
Neither Left Wing nor Right Wing generates the fantasy model of pedophiles grooming adults into presenting their children for trans medicalization so they are perpetually pre-pubescent in presentation never attaining adulthood, eternal sexual victims. It’s scientism which masks the actual intent and “praxis”
Ah, but if we moved the conversation elsewhere, others would not be able to enjoy it and participate. (The action here helps me, and I am actually trying to make Substacking into a living :-) Thank you for the kind words!
This subject (and the players you mentioned) is something about which you know more than I. I am not a prude or afraid of it; it is simply not my area of focus. (I have had to teach myself to focus because I find so many things so interesting and can easily get distracted.)
I do not believe that androgyny brings down an empire; it surely must be a symptom rather than a cause. But the fact that it appears to have happened before, at the end or previous empires, is instructive.
I would suggest that you read more Jared Diamond than Camille Paglia - I wouldn’t take someone who believes in Astrology seriously. Her schtick was old by the 90’s - take the contrarian stance on any subject, declare feminists hate her, say Dionysian three times, add water and stir gently. Very few empires and Dynasties had waves of androgyny at all, much less documented - I mentally index Central America, Asia, Mideast, Northern Africa… remember, unpopular men and politicians were claimed to be sissy or female in Roman culture la possibly meaning the equivalent of merely soft, as in soft on crime. Most surviving Roman, and Greek artwork was martial and unabashedly heterosexual.
Yeah, the thought did occur to me that Greece and Rome alone constitute a small sample size.
And I was just yesterday thinking about someone else who takes contrarian positions just for the sake of being contrarian (or to remain controversial, and thus relevant?): Ann Coulter. She is so intellectually inconsistent that it seems to me like it must be some sort of personality disorder.
The truth is, I am not going to be reading up much in this area. I have a casual interest in almost everything in the universe, and will listen to someone with expertise talk about various subjects. But I only have so much brain power and reading time, so I have to pick and choose areas of personal focus :-)
Dec 26, 2023·edited Dec 26, 2023Liked by Christopher Cook
I see many dinging you here for your take not being quite as global and all encompassing as each might like, from their perspective. You set out to elucidate the thread of leftist thought and did it wonderfully. It falls in line with my general analysis of the "history of leftist agitation" and how that arrow points - at this time - to transgenderism. I would quibble on only one matter; there is no end and positing pedophiles and obese people as victims may not be the end to it. Genetic legacy will be targeted very soon, with carve outs proposed for the short in stature (unless they are men) or any of a plethoral of supposed, "provably real" disadvanteges we can suss out from a strand of DNA.
I'll risk pissing off many here when I say, many "ex-liberals", newly "based", TERFs, etc. still retain leftist frameworks about analyzing ideas and facts. No wonder, as academia is not just filled with those who would share Marx's agenda, but the entire enterprise in the West is soaking in Marxist dialectics. Not just the loftier Hegeliam synthesis, but the unfortunate fall out from a thought system lacking in historical rigor; false dichotmies, a disdain for empiracism, mistaking a thesis and its contrapositive and many other forensic ticks.
I hope you are wrong about the 2084-ization of society (hobbling the athletic, disfiguring the beautiful, shortening the tall, etc.). But knowing the left and its trajectory, you may very well be right.
Yes. It's all down to Long March neo-Marxism - helped along with a healthy dose of extreme health & safety risk aversion, and a willing coterie of opportunistic grifters ready to take advantage.
My own recent post addresses this subject in a slightly different way.
People who might accept the framework you propose, as I do, balk when we get to what’s “back of behind” all this: the transhuman movement, run by billionaires with all the políticos in their pockets and pharma in their portfolios, with the urban land, the corporate rental ownership, the farms and heritage seeds, the laws and policies, the gold and money and aaaall the real power. Even with my reading and experience with all facets of the scenarios you detail, I still wonder, “Can this really be true?” when I delve into that movement and connect the dots.
This is made even more difficult because so many who are being used to promote the furthest left’s agenda have no idea, and no connection, to this much more hidden (for now) influencing factor. Now as in the past, the useful idiots are just tools, and do not know it. Any discussion of this over-arching campaign will get you pegged a conspiracy theorist, a madman, worse.
I can’t say as I’d blame anybody for coming to that conclusion, because it seems mad to me and I already kind of believe it!
Did you stop short of this final piece in the puzzle because you’re not convinced of it, or because you wanted to argue the most observable, demonstrable level before going on to the far greater challenge (to me, anyway, as the rest makes perfect sense) of what’s behind it all? Or perhaps you reject the notion of a really weird and spooky-as-f**k transhuman Valhalla somewhere, hard at work on this? (If so I hope you’re right.)
I’d love your thoughts on this, and if you agree there are some wicked minds at work on plans to change the course of our species (which makes me feel insane to even articulate) I hope you’ll pen an essay with the same great clarity and purpose as you did here. If you don’t agree, I’m eager to know why: I’d like to be talked out of it myself.
Because if what I read is true, even if we can defeat what is most evidently wrong and redirect our country back to sanity and revitalize the American project, we have the battle for our existence still ahead.
I wish I could talk you out of it. I really do. I fear, however, that you are correct.
I wrote about this aspect of what is going on because I know more about it, and because I am sure that it exists. The history of the left is real. The left's incrementalist effort to undermine and take over the West is real. The "conspiracies" associated with those efforts (Soviet-funded operations, e.g.) are real.
What you are talking about is a level up from all that. I believe it is real, but I don't have as much knowledge and we don't have as much clear evidence. My suspicion is something like this:
The leftist aspect (which I describe in the piece) is a long-standing phenomenon. The globalist/transhumanist aspect is newer (or, at least, it was much more well-hidden in the past). The ideologies and goals of leftism and this other phenomenon overlap, but this other phenomenon may now be engineering things, and taking advantage of the movement leftism has built, for its own purposes. The power that leftism has built is broad. The power that these creepy globalist billionaire types have built is extremely concentrated.
That is roughly what I believe to be the case, based on what we are seeing. But I don't know enough to make any dispositive claims about it.
I do a little speculating on the subject here, in a piece in which I deconstruct the reactions I have observed to "the regime" over the last three years:
https://christophercook.substack.com/p/architects-operatives-cheerleadersoh
You mention money, and I do touch on that aspect here: https://christophercook.substack.com/p/the-trans-industrial-complex-is-a . However, I believe that you are primarily speaking of something even bigger that that. But, money is always a part of it—they need resources in order to maintain power.
Bottom line: I definitely agree that there is something weird and spooky-as-heck going on.
Transhumanism enters the general consciousness with the novel Frankstein.
Ooh, yeah—that is a very interesting observation!
When I first started reading what Jennifer Bilek (and others) were writing about transhumanism being behind the transgender movement, I thought it was too kooky because transhumanism is so kooky. But Bilek's meticulous investigative journalism really seems irrefutable. [For those not familiar with the work of Bilek and others, please see and subscribe to https://www.the11thhourblog.com/ ]
However, in my lesbian radical feminist organizing, I do not typically initially refer people to her work because to do so would make me and what I am saying sound too whacky! Too much like a "conspiracy theorist". And yet these billionaires really are engaging in a conspiracy! I do mention the role that the billionaire autogynephiles have and are having in bribing universities and other institutions, including the Democratic Party, to promote transgender and postmodern ideology, but stop short of getting into transhumanism because it is so unbelieveable at first glance. Who could be so crazy as to think that women can be replaced when it comes to human reproduction? Well, some billionaire males think just that and are putting their money into making it happen.
Most people can see that the denial of the binary nature of sex is ridiculous. Nevertheless, they may still have sympathy for those who are "dysphoric" and apparently uncomfortable with pressures to conform to our culture's prescriptive sex-stereotypes. Most people know that our culture's notions about "masculine" and "feminine" are too rigid. And many people are outraged that men are now being able to access women's sports, prisons, shelters, changing rooms and restrooms, and understand that predatory men are taking advantage of sympathy for the boys and men who might really be uncomfortable with their sexed bodies and rigid notions of social roles.
We can stop what these autogynephilic, misogynist billionares are trying to do without trying to first make people understand that transhumanism is behind their efforts. People can better understand how wealthy men with sexual fetishes might really be pushing what we are seeing with children and other vulnerable young people, when it comes to both "gender affirmation" and "minor attracted persons". Everyone knows predatory men exist and that many of them are pedophiles.
As always, we have to start where people are at. Some people will be amenable to understanding the role that the pursuit of transhumanism is having, but most people will oppose what is happening without having to understand that ultimate threat.
On a more granular level, this interview of formerly woke Keri Lake by Peter Boghossian on how Keri (and others) were/are drawn into the woke movement, what keeps them stuck in the cult and how Keri got out has really made me understand how otherwise highly intelligent people are caught up in the woke cult. As you will see, Peter is trying to figure out how to "scale up" getting people to stop being enamored of the cult. It was really eye-opening for me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFGGRFiJLrs
It is also clear to me that these transhumanists are not really "Left" at all. They have co-opted people on the Left. There are also right-wing, left-wing and apolitical autogynephiles, too. Sexual fetishes are not partisan! But all of this is misogyny at its worst.
The major corporations and medical providers that are supporting and profitting from "gender affirmation" are not Leftist, either! There are many moving parts here.
So much here. We live in fascinating, terrifying times.
I am familiar with Bilek's name and the subject of her work, but that is all. I am sure she has discovered terrible things. Nothing would surprise me.
I think your approach (not telling people things they are not ready to hear) is wise. Tell them what they are ready for, push the envelope a little, and then wait for them to catch up and then tell them some more. That is how it has to be.
What drives me crazy is the way that (almost) everyone seems to think that because they have an idea, they must force their idea upon all of us. "I think it is possible to create an artificial womb" becomes "We should engineer society so that all babies are born in artificial wombs." This is the dark side of the ultra-social nature of the human species—every idea, every solution, every plan ends up being collectivized and forced on everyone.
I also have thought about the other side of the notion of replacing women whenever I see the t-shirt that says "The future is female." What does that mean? Will human males be kept underground and their sperm harvested at regular intervals to keep reproduction going, but otherwise not be allowed out? How about "The future is human"? No one ought to be replaced. People should be free to do as they wish.
If people are allowed to be free—not engineered, not forced—then things will unfold naturally. Most people will be heterosexual. A small percentage will be homosexual. The vast majority will be content with their biological sex. A tiny fraction (.001–.003 %) will have dysphoria. (I have someone close to me who fits that category—I know what the real thing looks like, as opposed to indoctrination and social contagion.) A small percent of children will have gender confusion, roughy 90% of which will clear up by adulthood, and 80% of them will be homosexual. (That was the case until the left decided to mutilate all those children by telling them they must be trans—in essence, eliminating gays and lesbians from the population!)
If people are allowed to be free, then people will choose the life that suits them. Yes, there are correlations based on sex. Men and women will gravitate towards certain types of work and activities, correlated with sex-typical characteristics. But those correlations are not 100%, or even close. Usually they tend to be more like .6—so, e.g., per Jordan Peterson, 6 out of 10 women will be higher in trait-agreeableness than the average man. But that means that 4 out of 10 are not! People are individuals. We should let people be what they are. We should let things unfold naturally. If that means choosing a "typical" role or lifestyle, we should not denigrate it. If that means being or choosing something that is "atypical," great. Let it be. Enjoy the differences. We must stop making human society into a phenomenon where we're trying to force things on each other.
(I wrote about my wife's "atypical" nature here: https://christophercook.substack.com/p/transitioning-children-is-another)
I am glad that the news is getting out that autogynephilia is at work in some of this. I myself am just learning about it. The fact that they seem to need an audience of children is soooooo creepy. And the fact that the left is fueling this, and the outright assault on women—and that they have the power to push it all and make it stick, and so many are going along with it—is horrifying.
Transhumanism—again, why does it seem like transhumanists won't be content to simply do it for themselves—that it has to be "the future for all humanity"? Let people be. Let people choose. And leave our children alone.
I agree that at the top levels, transhumanists—and indeed, the globalist/billionaire cabal and WEF types—are not left in the classic sense. They are piggybacking. Like some sci-fi parasite that takes control of a host body, I believe they are attempting to use the phenomenon of international leftism to gain more power.
(If you and I have a disconnect on this, it may be because you are thinking of the left from the rank-and-file perspective, and I am seeing it as an aggregated ideological-historical-political phenomenon.)
I would enjoy watching the Smith/Boghossian interview. I like stories of people leaving the left! Having been raised on the left (https://christophercook.substack.com/p/my-ideological-journey-left-to-right), lived in the Pioneer Valley in Massachusetts (including hanging out a lot at Hampshire College), lived in Los Angeles, etc., I am familiar with what it's like. Every story of departure from it that I have read so far reads like departure from an angry, intolerant, unhappy cult.
Finally…at one point, many years ago in Los Angeles, most of my friends and social circle were lesbians. I owe them a lot, really. They befriended me and took care of me—feeding me lots of bacon while I was trying to survive on a union extra's "salary," hanging out, having fun, having me over for holidays when otherwise I would have been alone, etc. We have not talked in ages, and I do know my politics have moved further right while theirs have gone the opposite direction. But I wonder what they would think of everything that is going on today, with the transing, invasion of women's spaces and sports, etc. Well, I would not feel right even sending them a note to ask unless the note is accompanied by a truckload of bacon and brunch food. Like I said—I really do owe them!
"I think it is possible to create an artificial womb" becomes "We should engineer society so that all babies are born in artificial wombs."
Leftist confusion of "IS" with "OUGHT" - a fatal, deep flaw. This remains unexamined by many in the "disaffected liberals" crowd. The objects of the analysis may adjust, but the very deep heuristic remains in place.
You mean the heuristic of conflating can-do-a-thing with should-do-a-thing?
Absolutely.
in some cases it is a conflation so off kilter it is hard for us to wrap our heads around it; if you point out that something occurs naturally in trying to find the source of the problem, oh lets say male on female rape, that it is biologically based, and perhaps sharp punishments should be utilized, a feminist may counter with "Oh its natural, so its good? Is that what youre saying?" setting you up as a "rape apologist" because you acknowledge natural forces causing something. This has its own name, the Naturalistic Fallacy, but I dont know the name for a strawman false accusation of using a Natural Fallacy. I suppose we need a name for it these days. They project a naturalistic fallacy attribution on those who dont even make it, WHILE positing the source of the naturalistic behavior is "false consciousness" and cant be elimatied with real, appropriate criminal justice, but rather "counseling and social justice" which means letting them go and commmit again.
Its bad out there. Their brains are really pickled in a way that you dont see until its too late.
The more general example of the IS/OUGHT confusion is because one "feelz" that it should be so, it actually IS.
This is one of the many reasons why I have , for all intents and purposes, become an “anarchist.” I no longer wish to live in a system in which one-size-fits-all solutions are imposed upon me through violence, and in which my fate is in the hands of people like those whom you herein describe.
When you review Bilek otherwise excellently sourced and incisive ouvre, you may detect several strains and key concepts: straight male MtF fetishists are driving the trans movement, from historical cradle to immanent grave, "Capitalism" writ large is bad (with little differentiation between corrupt monopolisitc crony capitalism and free markets) and that transgenderism being akin to transhumanism (truly a revelatory concept for me and immanently sense making) are all, at their core "misogynistic".
If you are dipping into TERF space, you may find that its chaotic confusion is as "whattaboutist", atheist, anti-science and in denial about the excesses of leftism/feminism as any woke space, with one exception; trans bad. All the remaining leftist talking points are left in place and bolstered.
TERFs, still, famously deny any differences between men and women in any area except the body below the neck; evolutionary psychology is as haram with them as it was 30 years ago in the left vs Sociobiology wars.
The silence about Marxism's and feminism's role is deafening.
Generally agreed re: the TERF phenomenon. However, I think it has awakened many to the general insanity of leftism, leaving them more open to seeing the rest of leftism’s insanity. IOW, this phenomenon is still playing out, and I believe that this may be the first step in a journey away from the left for many of them.
One quibble here; the unfortunate targeting of effective non-feminist anti-trans campaigners by TERFs. Megan Murphy is continuing a several year long whisper campaign against BillBoard Chris (yes, the ususal "rapiness" stuff), TERFs participated in the pile on of Jordan Peterson (Megan was on the dias next to him in Candian parliament, ironic), TERFs have done such horrible things against Kellie Jae Minchul that she no longer calls herself a feminist, and has said that they have treated her far worse than trans activists and LibFems ever did.
At first I thought the problem with TERFs was the residual feminism, but I took it for granted that that came with the territory and so be it, I praised them for their work. Then, on TERF Twitter, real time conferences and the like, came to understand they were fighting an illogical rear guard action, not just for "feminism", but for "gender abolition" (denying the remaining sex differences they couldnt quite, just yet, get their heads around), and then further, for general marxist principles. None of this was a surprise, I accepted it, but there was a further black pill: they were actively handicapping some of the best and most effective anti-trans campaigners. It wasnt enough to let them run in their own lane, TERF feminsts were using the banner of antitrans to continue hammering away at abortion til 40 weeks, denigration of men as a sex class etc., but most egregiously, engaging in the ususal character assasination of key anti-trans activists that, if anything, on blanace, bolstered the trans position.
This is not just theory but observation; participation in an online Slack group for the LGBAlliance required that I affirm a women (lesbian) ONLY leadership, erasing men from this effort, despite purporting to be "LGB", and unrestricted abortion access up until birth. Humorously, in retrospect, there was a dust up about whether the effort should be pro-Palestine or Pro-Israel (this was 5 years ago!)
This was a sad realization that deep leftist thought patterns and ways of operating were alive and well and didnt just explain the realtive ineffectiveness of TERF efforts but sadly highlighted the positbility that they were actually making things worse. I know, forbidden thoughts in "ex-liberal" space.
I am in my 50s, and I began the process of questioning leftism when I was in my teens, so if you are referring to this as an ex-liberal space, I would say that is inaccurate. I have been away from the left since the early 90s.
In fact, I became stridently anti-leftist long before I even understood what the “opposing” ideology(s) were all about. I started to see glimpses of the rot as early as age 13, and then in drips and drabs for the next decade after.
If anything, I have recently been trying to dial back my intense anti-leftism (at least in public expressions thereof) in hopes of finding common ground on some other issues. And all this stuff you are saying isn’t helping 🤣🤣🤣 But the truth is the truth.
100%. Trans Red Pilled me to the left. It also Red Pilled me to the conclusion that TERFist feminism isnt the answer. So I waited, and low and behold, more robust factions have made major strides against trans. Many TERFs have tossed off the faminist moniker (Kellie-Jae Minchul) and alliances are shifting all over the place. Fascinating times.
my fear is that in not examining the core deficits of feminist ideology, the left, or even the center will fall into another trap. Auron MacIntyre and Neema Parvini have a running battle, in good humor, about whether the "woke will be put away". Auron says no, Neema, yes. I split the difference: trans and BLM will be allowed to slide to some degree, tho never retracted completely, but femininsm of a bland 2nd wave sort will be cemented firmly into centrist thought and even on the right to some degree, leaving a Marxist beach head, once again in the center of the public square.
You have a more detailed understanding of this particular area, and of the players involved, than I. But what you say/predict certainly sounds plausible.
It's beginning to dawn on most people that it doesn't come down to left/right, conservative/liberal, republican/democrat. Whoever embraces these ideas as a group, have been bought off or infiltrated and subverted, but there are many on the opposing side, who also have been bought off, but don't entirely buy into the ideology, and stay silent. Listen to any Yuval Harari speech and there can be no doubt as to the transhumanist movement. He's positively reverential when referring to it and utterly disdainful when speaking of "some nebulous God in the clouds" and fairy tales of Jesus, as the alternative. Those in the WEF, UN, WHO etc, who push us toward these weird ideologies, make no mistake, are psychopaths. They see themselves as godlike and will achieve it through the marvel of technology and mad science. In the meantime, they take pleasure in their power and manipulating the masses and creating the world as they see fit. Political parties matter not. Only evil and it's overarching influence.
How can they be stopped?
Well, even though there seems to be a growing global awareness as to what these people are up to, we need to coalesce as one voice and in numbers, in order to let them know we're onto them. Imagine the power we would have generated if the Canadian Truckers coordinated with the farmers in The Netherlands and Germany, and the protesters in Brazil, as well as the protesters in America on January 6th. This is what they fear...our strength in numbers. Without that happening (and it will, eventually, but the longer we wait, the more harm will be done) they will be their own worst enemy, as well as time to show none of their dire warnings will come to pass. (I wanted to say "the passage of time", but Kamala has ruined that for me.) As it is, they've had to reword their proclamations so many times since they settled on climate as their global tool, during their Club of Rome days. With each passing day, their absurdity and psycopathy becomes more apparent. Allow them enough rope to hang themselves.
We need the internet to stay up in order to facilitate this. How long before THEY figure that out and take it down?
Just when I get settled down, you pop off with more food for thought! Do you think they really have that much power? They've been wreaking a lot of havoc over the years (centuries, really), but now that more attention is being drawn to their dirty deeds, I wonder if they can get away with as much. Did you see those videos of Javier Milei at Davos? Awesome. And even better, Kevin Roberts, also at Davos? It was a beautiful thing.
Many copes here to defelct attention from leftist agitation. The strands Cook elucidates here are very real and the driving force. Late entries into the march, such as BigPharma transgenderism, and the corporate adoption of leftist tropes (in response to Occupy Wall Street: Green, trans, feminism, etc.) are just that, and not core causal forces.
I agree. Though I did just get a comment overnight that reminded me of one other notion/theory: other empires have seen a feminization of men and blurring of sex distinctions right before they fell. (Greece and Rome being the biggest examples) I wonder if there is also something there…
Absolutely. Paglias formation is a crucial piece. Another arrow pointing towards trans.
The world is complex. I see theoretical constructions about reality as shafts of light through a crystal (the "world") , that when turned in the hand, refracts differently, depending on the color of the light. Multifactorial exposition. This is a Hindu/Buddhist analytical frame, as is also the "Net of Indra" that positis a similar concept of multifractorial causation.
Just read about the Net of Indra. Mind blown! 🤯
Extremely well articulated and you hit the nail on the head. Perhaps he did't mention the multipolar global *agenda* 😬 because it's a whole book, rather than a short aticle.
You are absolutely on the right trail of breadcrumbs looking at the big picture and the powerful entities behind these movements and ideologies. Thanks for your thoughtful and intuitive insights. We have to stop with the "conspiracy theory" labeling stuff. There are conspiracies which abound to be sure, but most aren't made up by q anon and alt-right nationalist groups. They are mocking us while flaunting it right in our face and shouting "conspiracy" when we point it out.
Agreed. We are living in mad times, and we are all just trying to get a handle on exactly what is going on and how deep the rabbit hole goes. This is one of the ways that "they" are able to succeed: The rabbit hole is so deep, with both interconnected tunnels and blind alleys, that it is hard to find one's way to the truth. Meanwhile, the people who don't want to look, or don't even know that the rabbit hole exists in the first place, call us "conspiracy theorists" just for noticing that things don't seem quite right.
The sad truth is—we may never be able to know for sure, or to prove dispositively, exactly what is going on. And even if we had dispositive proof, a large swath of humanity will always refuse to believe. It is the way of things. Yet, there are always some whose eyes are sufficiently open—and at least we have each other, and can explore the possibilities with one another.
Unpopular opinion:
Intellectually-minded people (All of you lovely Substackers, for example, Of Course) love to construct grand theories to rationalize base human behavior - their own and others'.
Soviets/CCPs motivated by Russian/Chinese nationalism and greed always justify(ied) their actions with Communism, Americans with Manifest Destiny and Exceptionalism.
Socialists rationalize their envy with altruism.
Capitalists rationalize their abuses of power with Darwinism.
Spoiled, over-privileged rich kids created Critical Theory and Queer Theory to rationalize "I get to do whatever I want, with whoever I want and no one gets to hold me accountable, set boundaries or tell me 'No.'"
EVERYONE, on all sides, convinces themselves that their opponents' various individual self-interested actions are part of a massive secret nefarious conspiracy. If there is a dot somewhere, they will connect it to something, be assured. THEIR theory is genius of course, but everyone else's is insane. Of course.
Everyone attributes to conspiracy what is adequately explained by typical human selfishness, mistakes, incompetence and ass-covering, to paraphrase the old saying.
The reality is a lot more mundane, a lot more boring: people really are the same wherever you go. They act selfishly, predictably, in their own little sphere of influence, in parallel with or in opposite parallel or at converging or conflicting angles with other people acting selfishly and predictably in their own little spheres of influence. It is useful to point out the patterns in their actions, but a pattern isn't a conspiracy. It's evidence of our shared human nature.
Thank you for your thoughts.
Even if we stipulate, for the sake of argument, that people are motivated solely in the base fashion(s) you lay out, we still have the problem of how they justify their actions.
So, let us take the case of Marxism. This ideology, and the offshoots it spawned, murdered a nine-digit figure of humans in the 20th century, and they did it in pursuit of, or at least with the excuse that they were in pursuit of, a particular set of ideological principles.
This ideology created cohesion, energy, etc., which allowed a level of destruction that would not have been possible in its absence. In its absence, all you would have is disorganized selfish crazies. As such, they cannot do a fraction of the damage that the organized ideology can.
This distinction matters a great deal.
Yep. The rationalizations are rhetorically powerful.
They also provide people with a ready-made excuse for believing that the horrifying things they are doing are all for a noble cause.
What was it Solzhenitsyn said? Shakespeare’s evildoers we’re limited to a few dozen corpses because they didn’t have an ideology…
Peter Boghossian is trying to figure out how to get people caught up in the cult of woke to break out of it. This interview with Keri Smith is a "must view" if you want to understand how intelligent people get drawn into the cult and what makes them leave it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFGGRFiJLrs
Interesting analysis, and one I did not see. You've drawn a nice tight circle around the fissioning mechanic of Leftist victimhood campaigns. "Yes, the Workers are not rising up! We need more unhappy marginalized groups breeding in darkness like cockroaches to continue the fight, and degeneracy comes with God-hatred built right in!"
Yup. I studied the history of the left in some depth while working on my book, and it all began to make sense. And ultimately, when EVERYTHING is stripped away—the envy, the narcissism, the drive for power, etc.—at the root of it is all the simple drive to take things from other people. That's it. It's the human equation, modern-style. How do I get what I want? Persuade and produce or coerce and take? They have all chosen coerce-and-take as their primary strategy.
The Frankfurt school was quite clear about the need to adjust their tack.
Angela Davis studying under Herbert Marcuse was a nice illustration of this pivot point from economic to race/sex greivances.
Excellent point.
I agree entirely:)
We live in bizarre times!
https://youtu.be/RUrNrJcSvZM?si=MObWE3APvopexCbh&t=1370
Interesting take on the next frontier of "Human Equality" going past transgenderism.
Height and genetic legacy will come under scrutiny.
The only way transhumanis can take this on, is, of course the elephant in the room; not just loading brains onto silicon or life extension, but eugenics.
Yup. Have you seen “2084” or read “Harrison Bergeron”?
"Rank and filers, high on the left’s virtue-crack, can protest this characterization all they want, but it doesn’t make it any less true."
At first glance, I read "crack" not as the cooked down methamphetamine derivative, but the gluteal cleft...... lol. Placing the rest of leftists at the anus.
This essay has it right. There is a plethoral of fueling influences at the street level. Social media and the related narcissism epidemic, crucial in the vast sea of NPC "support XYZ!" activists is a required testbed/cess pool. BigPharma plays a role; an angle grasped desperately by feminists to once again blame "Patriarchy", "Men" and "Capitalism". Jennifer Bilek, an excellent reporter on this angle, is championed hard by the feminists with amnesia about their former war to abolitish "gender"; which back then wasnt antitrans, but protrans, in that it sought to explicitly dissolve the "sex and gender binary" (we see a remnant here in the newly coined "non-binaries").
So many other factors play a role, but in the underlying, driving forces, this essay nails it.
Thank you for your thoughts, and for you supportive words.
I am glad you added the part about BigPharma; I believe their role is a part of the puzzle. I speculate a little about that here: https://christophercook.substack.com/p/the-trans-industrial-complex-is-a
I am curious to learn more about what you mean by the word “amnesia”…
The role of Radical Feminism in creating the trans movement is overlooked by many TERFs. "Abolishing (Sex and) Gender" was a core concept. Many casual observers during the 2nd Wave thought this was just "Women can do anything men can (if Patriarchy is smashed) and should be allowed to". I support the second phrase but am luke warm about the first as an overarching truth. While this sounds like it is just "Equality", there is the leveling "Equity" baked in. Certainly in the practice of medicine and law, and other careers, for example, this is true; many women do as well or better than many men. But for family formation, career preferences and various other ways of being, it may not be (for most women). Also, it is all muddied by the conflation of "some", "all", "most" as modyfiers before any immutable group, in making generalizations. Something that feminism pioneered for sex, as we all, as a nation walked away from fuch formulations when placed before the words "black". "Blacks are... XYZ" as a formulation is forbidden on the left, and yet we continually hear "Women are....", and "Men are...." without nuance, from ALL feminists, TERFs included.
To bring it back to the point, feminism was key in introducing the concept that not just "gender" (career, dress, roles) were nonbinary and "social constructions" but that sex itself was as well; women were warriors, women were hunters, women would lap men in athletics, given enough time (all conceptions linked to biologicval sex, not just "gender"). Thats the theoretical.
In the empiral sphere, anyone who has spent time in (formerly) LGB space back in the 90s knew of the fetishist autogynophile MtFs, the occassional "true trans" gay men who transitioned to female, but also, many many lesbian feminist FtMs who justified their transition not with fetishism or in response to societal homophobia, but with feminist doctrines about any/all sex differences being "socially constructed". I'll leave aside the internal contradiction about using surgeries and medicine to "abolish" something that is supposedly not "real". (I have long tired of the leftist take down of critiques because, when elucidating their contradictions, one gets the response : "that doesnt make sense"; ahem, exactly, it does not make sense).
There was an entire FtM subculture constructed around peak feminist ideas culminating in something of a FtM "craze", unseen from the outside, but real enough that it earned a plot line in the first iteration of "The L Word", a TV series about the lesbian community. An emphasis on BigPharma, autogynophiliacs and the like is fine, but when coupled with no mention of the excesses and antiscience "theories" of the 2nd and 3rd waves of feminism, it looks like just more of the same: extreme leftism devoid of empirical evidence, misandry and a denial of womens agency (specifically in fostering the trans movement). I prefer a balanced approach that considers the missteps and sometimes deliberate animus of all parties involved, regardless of sex.
I am aware that many feminists pushed back even then to this phenomenon. I applaud them (this is illustrated as well in "The L Word" where Pam Greer's character, interestingly a straight woman, eloquently parses the difference between sex and gender, when she tells a young FtM that she can be who she wants to be without transitioning). However, the complete abrogation by even these women within feminism to address key flaws in their ideology, made this a fruitless effort.
There is little here for me to dispute; by and large, I agree.
Each one of us is fractionally responsible for the fruit of any ideological tree to which we contribute soil or sun. Thus, yes, even though TERFs are now departing in droves, radical feminism played a huge role in bringing about this phenomenon. They have to own that, just as each of us must own the ideologies to which we have provided our personal fuel. But…the fact that they are now departing in droves is an excellent start!
I actually don't hold any member of a group responsible for the sins of the group. I'd no more blame men, or women or even feminists, per se, as the sole group responsible for trans.
But I will call out all feminists currently for continuing to adhere to the ideas that got us here, while they retroactively and repeatedly blame "men" as a class.
Respectfully, the only idea they are departing is that transwomen are women. That's it. Not a single other idea.
Regarding your first point…
I understand. I do not hold people accountable for things they did not do. So, for example, I do not hold anyone living accountable for the sins of their ancestors. Doing so is, in fact, monstrous.
Similarly, I do not believe in any form of group guilt. That is not what I am proposing.
Rather, what I am saying is that we are responsible for the ideas we contribute to, and the effect of those ideas. Let me provide a concrete example, and ascribe some of those sort of responsibility to myself…
In the early 2000s, I was what you might call a mainstream conservative. (Details here, and in the previous parts of the series: https://christophercook.substack.com/p/my-ideological-journey-from-left-to-right-part-4) As such, I (somewhat reflexively) supported the policies of Bush 43. This includes, to my great shame, the second Gulf War. I cast votes and made arguments on behalf of these ideas and policies, and I must thus consider myself fractionally responsible for them. It is not the same kind of responsibility that one would have for a more direct and specific action, but it is a kind of responsibility nonetheless.
I hope that explanation clarified the notion sufficiently.
And to your final point…I understand. I think you are right. However, anyone can change, and if they have seen the light on that one point, at least some of them may do so on another and then another. I have seen it happen with people, so I know it is possible. I am hoping it happens much more!
Fun reading, but I have ask about the total absence of “left wing” organized labor in your historical narrative. Neither Marxist nor Elitist, it’s been wildly successful in a number of areas of both protecting labor, and (in my personal experience in Europe) aligning the interests of labor and “management” in mutually beneficial directions. In some areas, unions have become somewhat sclerotic - teacher’s unions seem to have no concept of what their wages should be, there is an unreal shortage of transportation labor which unions don’t seem to be facilitating recruitment for...
I don’t mean to be condescending but I’m also probably twice your age and I’ve seen this movie before. Trans fits into a very different schema from “leftist” thought, and oppression narratives. I have seen what I’ll call a trans (I’ll call androgynous, unisex, gender-bending, genderfuck, transsexual, transvestite, treansgender presentation a single manifestation) or social wave about every 15 years since I was a child, which is actually just an extension of a late 19th century phenomenon in Western culture - here’s a sampler.
Consider Marlene Dietrich in an albino male gorilla costume (“Blond Venus”) and then in Male Tuxedo (“Morocco”) is one manifestation, along with cross-dressing Cabaret (Weimar Germany) all in the early 30’s. Mid 40’s you had popular “Pony Ballets” and more in the USO during WWII. The 60’s ushered in the “Peacock Revolution” with men wearing “feminine” (and considered outrageous) prints, and of course women adopting men’s pants wholesale; “Crisis of Masculinity”; “Some Like it Hot”; “Unisex”.
Glam Rock” in the 70’s was ubiquitous (and also revival of 30’s Cabaret style - there’s also a supercycle of 60 years from trans chic to retro). The 70’s also brought Trans visibility from Renee Richards and others, Mick Jagger in a dress (“Performance”) and Diane Keaton in a suit (“Annie Hall” 60 years after Dietrich). “Divine”.
The 80’s New Wave/New Romantic looks - generally favoring heavy makeup on men and the usual reprisal of “unisex” fashion, and women with shoulders wider than men’s (think Grace Jones and “Dynasty” Joan Collins. Klaus Nomi’s look from the early 80’s is the basis for seemingly all current TV drag (30+ years later). The nadir was the masculine-parody “Village People” rebranding as “New Romantics” with some eye make-up. Boy George. “Tootsie”.
The 90’s ushered more of the same, or even more indirect, or overtly trans (“Silence of the Lambs”). Drag mainstreams (“Ru Paul”), men wearing nail polish in grunge (Cobain) - sort of setting a stage for... 2000
The current century ushered in more trans, labeled frankly as drag or trans - “Trans America”, “Hedwig”, “Kinky Boots”, among other films, and to me the key “Billy Elliot” (more in a moment), RuPaul TV. “Billy Elliot” was a major film with a boy in a rough-and-tumble working class context being bullied for pursuing ballet - a “feminine” career. That was new.
All preceding “gender nonconforming” depictions were adults. I had a conversation with Trans Activist Lynn Conway (whom I had for a speaking engagement) around 2002/3 where I got (1) an explanation about how wonderful Puberty Blockers would be (2) transvestite was actually transsexual (3) trans were up to 3% of the population. Lynn Conway is not a Left-Wing Marxist with a background in postmodern structuralism (80’s, I had wide reading in postmodern “philosophy” not Lynn).
Lynn was at the front of what I would call “scientism” in trans which is wholly new, neither Marxist nor Leftist, nor “oppressed”. Androgynous, unisex, drag... “drag” like “gay” is easy to think of, easy words and concepts which, crucially, didn’t mask reality. Ordinary people didn’t speak of “fetishistic teansvesticism”, “Auto-gynephilia”, “sex-reassignment surgery”, but the 2000’s ushered in a vastly expanded range of bullshit.
We’re in a peak cycle of “dysphoria”, “people with a cervix” (as 20 people where or what a cervix is), a vast array of pseudo-scientific “scientism” specifically arranged, intentionally arrayed to sound authoritative not by Elites, but by street kids. “Gender” and “gender identity” are now in a 60-year supercycle retro peak (it’s that old) reaching its nadir in meaninglessness with “fluid” continuously varying definitions (gender isn’t fluid, fluids are; gender doesn’t flow, it is a grammatical structure).
Pronoun neutering has been attempted for hundreds of years. English, as an almost completely gender-neutral modern language, will hang onto gendered pronouns for a long time to come, because there would be literally no other way to gauge effects of sex in literature and common conversation. In gendered languages pronoun gender is redundant, in English it is singular.
The focus on children’s genitals, simultaneously masked by scientism, is an amazingly new phenomenon which I cannot find any parallel in any right or left social movement you mention - only relatively old religious contexts (ritual genital mutilation as male or female circumcision derived from Semitic ritual; castration in Catholic music; ritual neutering and mastectomy in Russia; kidnapping / neutering in India) or political - emasculation in China imperial households; or purely social - various genital mutilation scattered elsewhere (Australian aboriginal penis splitting (“subcision”).
Scientism and child genital mutilation. I cannot trace that back to Foucault or Derrida, I can find antecedents in pseudo-science or scientism, and I can’t find antecedents in historic trans movements.
Your comment has so much food for thought that I am hesitant to offer any quick answers. I will be considering your thoughts for a while to come.
I believe that the explanation I have offered is a large part of the picture, but you are correct that it cannot be the whole of it.
I recall recently hearing someone (Camille Paglia??) mention that statues in Greece and Rome began to fall in sexual dimorphism (more androgynous men, especially) as their empires declined (and, obviously, that the statues represented a real-world trend). Could it be that this is a pattern, and that we are experiencing it not only for the American empire, but for the period of Western dominance in general?
And could that combine with other explanations for a broader explanation of the scientism, the late-stage craziness, the addition of children in the list of targets, etc.?
It would be fun to talk 1:1 instead of a public forum sometime - you’re well-reasoned and fun to read. Camille Paglia is part of a Sontag / Paglia / Butler / Leibowiz sort of “thought” - Fran Leibowiz and Sontag as the real writers, one incredibly funny one incredibly smart; Paglia unintentionally funny and Butler unintentionally stupid, sort of the Bizarro versions of their dual. "Sexual Balonae" and its neverending girls are pink boys are blue singsong with departures into fantasy (Astrology is real) has subterranean (a favorite French intellectual model) or was it cthonic or mythopoetic connections er... To Foucault via "The History of Sex".
There's a Roman fear of men who are passive sexually - "Mollis" or soft (think of an oyster or mollusc) was somewhat equivalent to "faggy" though Mollis survives also as a gay slur through the centuries - Molly House, Molly Coddle, Molly, or "Mary". Think of calling someone "soft on crime" (now a Postmodern flourish: ...) as opposed to "Hard/on Crime" (the forward slash implied single word was a Sontag feature, and sexual "edgy" byplay, men having a hardon for something - with a parenthetical self-referential aside like this) - well we're back to effeminacy and softness as the end of the world, a Republican (Roman/Americam, Paglia representing the Cthonic Connection between empires) dire warning. Empires don't collapse because of androgyny, they collapse because they can't be sustained economically, generally the result of disease and/or environment conspiring to deatabilize or "Steven Gould" punctuate an equilibrium of ecologically stable "Red Queen" competition.
Neither Left Wing nor Right Wing generates the fantasy model of pedophiles grooming adults into presenting their children for trans medicalization so they are perpetually pre-pubescent in presentation never attaining adulthood, eternal sexual victims. It’s scientism which masks the actual intent and “praxis”
Warning: tough reading
https://www.nifty.org/nifty/transgender/young-friends/mommas-trans-boy
It’s
Ah, but if we moved the conversation elsewhere, others would not be able to enjoy it and participate. (The action here helps me, and I am actually trying to make Substacking into a living :-) Thank you for the kind words!
This subject (and the players you mentioned) is something about which you know more than I. I am not a prude or afraid of it; it is simply not my area of focus. (I have had to teach myself to focus because I find so many things so interesting and can easily get distracted.)
I do not believe that androgyny brings down an empire; it surely must be a symptom rather than a cause. But the fact that it appears to have happened before, at the end or previous empires, is instructive.
The assault-on-children aspect of it, whatever the cause, must be fought. I make some philosophical arguments on that front here: https://christophercook.substack.com/p/drag-shows-are-an-actionable-violation
Fair.
I would suggest that you read more Jared Diamond than Camille Paglia - I wouldn’t take someone who believes in Astrology seriously. Her schtick was old by the 90’s - take the contrarian stance on any subject, declare feminists hate her, say Dionysian three times, add water and stir gently. Very few empires and Dynasties had waves of androgyny at all, much less documented - I mentally index Central America, Asia, Mideast, Northern Africa… remember, unpopular men and politicians were claimed to be sissy or female in Roman culture la possibly meaning the equivalent of merely soft, as in soft on crime. Most surviving Roman, and Greek artwork was martial and unabashedly heterosexual.
Yeah, the thought did occur to me that Greece and Rome alone constitute a small sample size.
And I was just yesterday thinking about someone else who takes contrarian positions just for the sake of being contrarian (or to remain controversial, and thus relevant?): Ann Coulter. She is so intellectually inconsistent that it seems to me like it must be some sort of personality disorder.
The truth is, I am not going to be reading up much in this area. I have a casual interest in almost everything in the universe, and will listen to someone with expertise talk about various subjects. But I only have so much brain power and reading time, so I have to pick and choose areas of personal focus :-)
I see many dinging you here for your take not being quite as global and all encompassing as each might like, from their perspective. You set out to elucidate the thread of leftist thought and did it wonderfully. It falls in line with my general analysis of the "history of leftist agitation" and how that arrow points - at this time - to transgenderism. I would quibble on only one matter; there is no end and positing pedophiles and obese people as victims may not be the end to it. Genetic legacy will be targeted very soon, with carve outs proposed for the short in stature (unless they are men) or any of a plethoral of supposed, "provably real" disadvanteges we can suss out from a strand of DNA.
I'll risk pissing off many here when I say, many "ex-liberals", newly "based", TERFs, etc. still retain leftist frameworks about analyzing ideas and facts. No wonder, as academia is not just filled with those who would share Marx's agenda, but the entire enterprise in the West is soaking in Marxist dialectics. Not just the loftier Hegeliam synthesis, but the unfortunate fall out from a thought system lacking in historical rigor; false dichotmies, a disdain for empiracism, mistaking a thesis and its contrapositive and many other forensic ticks.
All well said.
I hope you are wrong about the 2084-ization of society (hobbling the athletic, disfiguring the beautiful, shortening the tall, etc.). But knowing the left and its trajectory, you may very well be right.
[cued up] https://youtu.be/RUrNrJcSvZM?si=MvXL2vCgxPPW7h9j&t=1425
Im so very sorry to tell you this.
We will stop them.
Desperate they may be, but in their desperation they're causing a huge amount of damage, to children, teens and women.
They sure are. It’s hideous.
Great article, thank you.
Yes. It's all down to Long March neo-Marxism - helped along with a healthy dose of extreme health & safety risk aversion, and a willing coterie of opportunistic grifters ready to take advantage.
My own recent post addresses this subject in a slightly different way.
https://johnsullivan.substack.com/p/a-journey-of-a-thousand-miles
I read it and commented at length!