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[Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”]
Did anyone ever really believe that men could become women? ‘Tipping Point’ author Malcolm Gladwell helped answer that question when he recently apologized for publicly asserting that men could change sex and fairly compete against women in sports because he was “cowed”.
No one bothered to follow up with the more interesting question, ‘What is Malcolm still too cowed to say in public’? It’s a question that also ought to be addressed to the various public figures, politicians, intellectuals and talkers, who have recanted the transgender heresy.
We know that they claimed to believe in one obviously wrong thing because of some combination of social pressure, manufactured consensus and intellectual incoherence.
What else do they hypocritically assert in public while privately doubting?
The intellectual crisis that led to Gladwell publicly asserting something that a small child, never mind a respected thinker, knew was wrong has its roots in the dual collapse of the western mind. Every preexisting moral and rational system, whether the Judeo-Christian ethos or the scientific method, is being dismantled as reactionary and is in the process of being replaced with the moral imperative of a revolutionary power shift from the oppressed to the oppressors.
This permanent state of moral emergency may not be questioned and its specific assertions are not subject to any of the religious or rational tests that once provided people with a consistent worldview based around clear principles rather than hysterical assertions that the crisis of the moment, ‘trans kids’, global warming, police shootings, Gaza or any of a grab bag of causes, is too grave to subject it to the rules of evidence in a search for the actual truth.
The Left claims that its various ideological flavors are rational and scientific, but they are nothing of the kind, instead they use ideology to pick and choose their science. That was why the Soviet Union could champion Lysenkoism and lock up actual scientists because the pseudoscience fit the Communist conception of how life should work. Not how it did work.
That is why skeptics are right to question environmentalist claims of human industry causing planetary destruction for matching all too closely with traditional leftist anti-capitalism, its luddite obsessions and the romanticization of the pre-industrial countryside, no matter how many PhDs assert that they represent expert opinion that just happens to match their politics.
The bizarre notion that men could become women by identifying as women fit a ‘Lysenkoist’ notion of human plasticity. There was and is nothing scientific to the entire thing. Doctors and researchers have brushed away past subjective claims of patient experiences with various medical conditions, even when those claims were later substantiated, chose to entirely discard basic biology here not because of any new data, but because ideology demanded it.
The transgender case rested on nothing more than special pleading, on long since discredited claims that ‘validating’ delusions about gender spectrums prevented suicides (and where else are doctors willing to prop up patient delusions, let alone perform highly risky unnecessary cosmetic procedures to validate those feelings) and its assertions about men being born with ‘female brains’ were the subject of feverish fantasies in online fetish groups, not research.
The ‘science’ of the transgender case lay not in its assertion of the positive, that men could become women, but in the negative, in its radical destruction of what (as part of this process) it dubbed the gender binary. The Left never really proves its points, rather it uses conspirational agitation, turning that which it seeks to destroy into a strawman, picks out-of-context pieces of information to poke holes in it, asserts conspiracy theories in which the strawman represents a broader systemic form of oppression and then politicizes the debate into a binary choice between supporting the victims or being one of the oppressors. That is what sucked Gladwell in and so many others liberals who fear being ‘on the wrong side of history’ more than a big lie.
Intellectuals and public figures who fell for an ideological case rather than a factual one and who confused ethics and morality with the tenets of leftist ideology rationalized the unreasonable and now that the case has collapsed have to rationalize why they did it.
Did anyone really believe that men could become women? It’s the same question as whether anyone really believed that redistribution of wealth by a centralized government could make society fair. They may not have believed that it was really true, but they believed that it was right. That is the tribute that liberals pay to leftists, agreeing to see the world not as it is, but as it can be made to be, and confusing their monstrous totalitarian delusions with idealism.
Modern liberals (rather than classical liberals) and leftists both share a belief in the overwhelming power of social transformation to make society ideal. The liberal border line used to be that the transformation had to be voluntary, rational and based on the realities of human nature. On the other side you had Marxism with its morass of conspiracy theories, hypothetical economics, tyrannical bureaucracies and grad student power fantasies. Liberals could accept socialism as long as its implementation was plausible and appeared to be voluntary.
The border line is long gone. As is for the most part any distinct liberal identity. The Democrats, a party of which liberals were once a fringe, base their plans for total social transformation on the same conspiracy theories, fantasy economics and power grabs that characterized Marxists. The only way such nonsense can hold up is with total ideological conformity. Shutting up opponents, whether timid liberals like Gladwell or vocal conservatives like Charlie Kirk, is the only way that any of what now passes for liberalism can continue to control the discourse.
Believing in a dozen impossible ideological things before breakfast is not a bug, it’s a test of the communications system. Extraordinary claims used to require extraordinary proof until it was reversed so that extraordinary claims like men can become women, there is no such thing as inflation unless companies choose to raise prices and the police are committing genocide against black people became overwhelmingly accepted by liberal institutions with no proof at all, only ideological emoting, while the existence of women, inflation and crime required extraordinary degrees of proof and were denounced as dangerous backward notions.
In 2024, Democrats lost an election built on all three of those arguments. The general public continued to believe in the existence of women, wanted police to protect them from criminals and refused to believe that inflation was a figment of their imagination or could be solved by blaming companies for raising prices. As consequential as each of these three issues are, encompassing economics, society and the rule of law, the lies are crucial for understanding the corruption of the intellectual class and their role in corrupting our discourse.
The nation’s intellectual class has been divided for the most part between radicals who will assert anything, such as that looting is a public good, that castrating children is best for them and that AI will soon bring us ‘fully-automated luxury communism’ so that no one will have to work, and timid liberals who will pretend to believe anything to keep their class and station.
Universities, publishing, nonprofits and the other venues for intellectuals have become echo chambers in which any ideologically correct absurdities, no matter how manifestly irrational, false and mad, can take hold, thrive and then be used as a purity test to purge heretics. They are venues where only liars, idiots and those who pretend to believe them can earn a living.
It can be hard to tell apart the liars from those only pretending to believe their lies, and both are easily confused with the idiots who may only be pretending to be idiots, but in the final analysis all three are members of a political class pretending to be an intellectual class. When a lie becomes sufficiently unpopular, the people who pretended to believe the liars apologize for that particular lie alone, rather than for the moral and intellectual failings that led to it.
What other lies do they only pretend to believe? We’ll never know until those lies become unpopular too. But transgender ideology offered the simplest possible common sense test to people who claim to be able to tackle the most challenging scientific, ethical and philosophical dilemmas. They failed. And the entire edifice of an intellectual class failed along with them.
Once one looks into the complexity of DNA and such its hard to believe one sex can be converted to the other.
Don’t look at this link !!! Sorry!
Post it where teens and libs will see it.
call it “free govt cheese, ” or something
“rational and scientific ” lgbt genital mutilation post op photos
https://www.nairaland.com/7717769/part-woke-culture-dont-talk
Very good article. I recently wrote a paper for Dr. Miguel Faria’s website [Hacienda Publishings} in which I made the statement that the only true believers in this nonsense were the stupid followers of the elite collectivist class, who, most likely., died laughing that they could get anyone to believe this nonsense. Of course, this was designed to destroy the existing moral order. As I see it, we have an elite who used the old standby [A promised new utopia]. to entice the fraternity of the stupid to follow along like mindless .lemmings. All of their closely held statements and beliefs are only for those who cannot think—the stupid club. There is an old saying, “You cannot reason anyone out of a belief that they were not reasoned into.” They are resistant to reasoning, facts, logic, critical thinking and truth.
Proof that prolonged exposure to TDS rots the brain.
Cross dressing has moved from a mostly private harmless fetish to a non-stop orgy.
You can’t change X and Y chromosomes.
I don’t know…
I have seen quite a few male drama queens who act like they are on the rag…
In other words, they are deranged.
Those people aren’t truly men . they really women, they are freaks
“Did anyone ever really believe that men could become women?”
No. Or, very, very, very few.
“We know that they claimed to believe in one obviously wrong thing because of some combination of social pressure, manufactured consensus…”
Yes.
There was a “transition” at work If any mispronouned the person, there would have been a firing.
the emperors new clothes syndrome . only those on the left believe a lie and will promulgate a lie as long as it serves their purpose . they know that biology dictates a fact set in concrete but that wont stop them from destroying peoples lives if you buck the lie . they will mutilate anyone physically , personally and politically if you dissent . feckless joe and his comrades are the absolute proof of it . the left will do anything in the ”long war against god ” read up on henry morris ‘s book of the same title and be informed .
Exactly like 1984’s “2+2=5,” eh?
Fact: Professionals (medical mental health( are still silenced and stand to lose a license and a career for not “ affirming” transgender.
Worse are those practicing who fostered this transitioning in patients. Now there are a generation of altered people.
That is just one example of how such falsehoods do real harm to real lives. Gladwell can take off his ‘trans believing’ hat. But a generation of altered people cannot as easily do so.
Gladwell looks like ET’s illegitimate daughter.
For 20 years, Gladsmell has been the star of the The New Yorker magazine spewing smug supercilious saccharine lectures to haughty lightweight woke wannabes.
Recently a woke neighbour, retired like me, said, You’re always reading books on your balcony. Have you read the latest New Yorker? I answered by paraphrasing Gore Vidal’s quip about Truman Capote: I can’t read the New Yorker. I’m diabetic. She didn’t get it. She never will. Neither will Malcolm Gladwell.
Why do I still have to see pics of this supercilious smug little runt of a “man”. Go to hell Gladwell.
It’s starting to look like the trans movement is resembling an actual criminal enterprise. The practitioners seem to be caught up in a world of crime, intimidation and murder.
We need to identify who the organizers are, and who is running the shooters. There are definitely similarities from shooter to shooter and include a rifle and manifesto. We may find out that Trans Inc. looks more like organized crime.
Ever heard of Trantifa?
I think the term ‘subculture’ for this group is a “kind” description
In addition to the trans movement, I think the whole gay movement revolves around this murder cult. Truly sick stuff. I’m getting very sick of being told to be tolerant.
I started using the term tran-tifa after I saw it in a comments section much like this one. I gave kudos to the poster; he replied he didn’t invent the term. It does capture the history of recent events aptly, and is sure to evoke a response from crypto-trans supporters. All the better.
When the evil machinations of a wicked loon is brought to fruition, we all ask, “did anyone see this coming?” Well, just like these Lefties that can’t help themselves making deplorable comments about Charlie Kirk’s murder, teasing out a response from someone to the label “Trans-tifa” let’s us know who they are.
Orwell called it controlled insanity,Communist brainwashing technique.
The rationalization of Gladwell and his ilk can be summed up in three words – fear of riots.
“We’re afraid that if the fringes of society are not catered to then they will throw a tantrum and start burning things down. We could stop them, but that would require us to spill a lot of blood. We don’t want to do that, so let us go along to get along.”
They started out Normal then they went to Collage and we see the results
…and math is racist.
“… the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.”
– Theodore Dalrymple, FrontPageMagazine.com, August 31, 2005
I would add that once people have been intimidated into lying, an individual who insists on proclaiming truth forces the liars to confront their own cowardice, and this is not seen as a hero but rather as a pariah.
Who is “dismantling” the scientific method. The Left is dismantling the scientific method? This from someone who poses as an expert on climate science or sexual dysphoria without knowing anything about them? Someone who supports Donal Trump and Robert Kennedy Jr.? You are funny.
and you are a fucking asshole
bored again are we?
irritating, obnoxious, show-off, pissant, boor — does your mother not love you?
all of your comments are like walking onto an elevator and smelling rancid farts left by someone who just exited
early euthanasia is always an option, crumbcakes
Dickhorn strikes again. Or is it Dickhead? You couldn’t find the scientific method with two hands and flashlight..
You aren’t an expert on anything. Just Leftist stupidity. No doubt you supported the NHS “experts” who wanted you to mask up and stay six feet apart during COVID. Turns out they just made it all up. So did our NIH. Of course the vast majority of the Covid stupidity happened under the Democrats and Labour.
Is your mask still on your face, moron?
Donal Trump is a great Irishman.
Saw a girl holding a sign saying “Trump’s a fascist”….asked what a “fascist” was….she said “I’m not a political scientist.”
Saw someone try to debate Michael Knowles by saying “That’s a medical issue, and you’re not a medical professional.”
We have reached post-Idiocracy — the movie in which the hero said “I’m no botanist, but I CAN TELL those plants need water.”
Maybe fight, rather than join, the “must have proper credentials” society — and think/research for yourself?
I still occasionally hear people say universities are ruined… except for STEM areas. I have long warned that while the subject matter itself may be more resistant to radicalization than say English Literature, nonetheless it is not enough to protect university departments or science as popularly understood. The use of so-called computer simulations of environmental collapse was one of the main ways the general population’s notion of science blurred. Their typically worthless simulations have led to the idea that scientists and doctors can proclaim their true truths however they want, so long as the style is familiar to real truth. Now mass numbers of evil fools accept arbitrary pronouncements about science and facts, no matter how dishonest those facts are. The notion of fact itself has been subverted and perverted.
Sorry, I worded that 2nd to last sentence about facts badly. I meant : `no matter how dishonest those pronouncements are about those facts.’ Although it is true, of course, that manipulatively selected facts can also be used for dishonest ends.
I think there are still some confusions in what you write. Facts out of context become part of the bigger lie, do they not? “Facts” as presented by liars and manipulators cannot be trusted, and even facts presented by honest thinkers and researchers must be questioned. Trust but verify? Perhaps a better word than “facts” might be “data”? I think the scientific method provides us with a means to parse data to separate it from the sticky unnoticed influences that include speculation and wishful thinking. Your comments are appreciated.
I think I agree with everything you said. I’m far from expert on the techniques propagandists use to manipulate facts, and also data, which seems to have been used dishonestly in, for instance, covid scare tactics. I’m not sure about how different people view the nuances of the words `fact’ and `data.’ I usually use `data’ when the `facts’ in question are more quantitative, so that I use `data’ to refer to a subset of what are more generally `facts.’ .
I might add that the scientific method is not enough on its own, just because without a moral basis its use is liable to be corrupted. But certainly, properly used, I think the classical scientific method is great.
The post was not meant to get into propaganda techniques, however important. It was only meant to draw further attention to the issue that under totalitarianism, academic science departments can be ruined with fake science publications and theories and those scientists with integrity may be purged, e.g. by committee, regardless of the quality of their work. No academic department is ultimately safe.
they are starting in on STEM in a big way
One of the reasons for all this transgenderism seems to be related to the behavior of primitive tribes. The victors may humiliate the defeated men by making them dress up as women, and mutilating their parts.
I suspect that you are spot on. May I add that this behavior also reveals a crude contempt for women, but also the understanding that women and men are not the same and have different roles in the human experience. Well written, sir.
“womanface.”…yes, it is mocking women. Imagine that done to any other group.
Want to have the DEMOcrats be the ones pushing to END the “trans crap”? Just insist that the next rapist is INVOLUNTARILY TRANSITIONED! If you’ve ever read or heard what it’s really like to “convert” a man to a “woman” it will make you sick! The left will contend that it’s CRUEL and UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT!