Good point about adults being able to vote but purportedly not being able to judge the consequences of transsexual hormones and surgery. Ive also been bothered by the disconnect between transsexual hormones (which are allowed under the supervision of the loosest doctor you can find) and anabolic steroids. Sure, people can overdo the latter. But like there’s definitely dosages where the risks overlap. Plenty of incoherence to go around.
"Her parents sheltered her by homeschooling her, then thrust her into public school while she was going through puberty. I could go on a whole rant about how this is essentially a form of child abuse"
This should be your next article. Across your articles I've read, I don't agree with certain interpretations, but I always appreciate how you seem to try to consider different perspectives.
- Your list summarizing 8 possible contributors lost the capitalism/classism bullet from previously in the article.
- I also feel like you're a little premature or incomplete in your representation of higher incidents of NPD in the transgender community: The difference between adaptive & maladaptive traits, and how experts generally agree that there are two subtypes (vulnerable & grandiose), despite the current DSM guidelines. You admit yourself that this is a vulnerable population earlier in your article and without representing that distinction in subtypes it's a mischaracterization or at least overgeneralization. Less thorough members of your audience may jump to conclusions at this.
I've gotten into a really bad habit of writing dozens of articles, not publishing them, going back to edit them, getting lost in the weeds... I would love to interview someone who has transitioned from homeschooling to public school. I personally identify myself as someone higher in narcissistic traits than average, but I agree that there is a big difference between types of narcissism: vulnerable narcissism, introverted vs extroverted narcissism. I have an article planned on the psychology of stalkers which goes into this.
This is brilliant. Thank you, and please keep at it!
Surely it has occurred to you that this could and should be split up into perhaps as much as a dozen separate posts - each of which you seem quite capable of expanding and developing (or not) as it seems suitable.
Not all right wingers are fascists, but fascist thinking has (right now) a more piercing grip on right wing populists and “influencers” than it does on some “broken” people on the left. This is just one reason why your type of work is important. Your type of work not only helps inoculate some against fascism and maybe even works as something of a therapeutic to those infected with fascist ideas (but who have not totalized their identification with fascism), it can even help any of us to deal with our own “brokenness” and how we can choose to react to the “brokenness” of others.
The term “brokenness” is indeed problematic when applied to any human subject, but all of us can sometimes subjectively “identify” with that modifier in different ways that are not equally unhelpful. For instance, when someone is being possessed/occupied/colonized/infected with fascist ideas, it might be better to think of them as “broken” than as stupid, evil, or hard core. “Brokenness” is only one metaphor for the (near?) universal susceptibility to the sensation that we are “missing” (“lacking”) something though we can choose to understand this sensation as being the result of our own being defective, cheated, deprived, or in the process of creation.
Perhaps you don’t think some people are working hard to undermine or frustrate the democratic rule of law via popular authoritarian movements based on blood and soil or religious identification in many parts of the globe right now.
Perhaps you don’t think that some people are working hard to undermine the democratic rule of law via popular authoritarianism in the US right now?
That’s fine.
You can believe or disbelieve in whatever you want.
I happen to believe that the democratic rule of law is under attack in the US and many other places across the globe right now. I happen to believe that what is going on is very similar to what was going on in the 1930s. I happen to believe that “fascist” is an apt term to describe the tendencies that are helping this happen, but I am open to a better term.
How would you describe, categorize, or label the current attacks on the democratic rule of law? Do you know deny this is happening? Do you care? Or do you think the threat to the democratic rule of law is coming just as much from the extreme left as from the extreme right?
@anonymous: Fascism and incoherence can be simultaneously dangerous. I explicitly call out fascism as dangerous in my most popular and recent articles.
To me "fascism" means contempt for the rule of law as something that might even begin to approach any reasonable idea of justice.
Fascism encompasses the idea that human values have no existence except for what can be enforced by violence or the threat of violence.
Fascism is also the belief that citizenship (or even personhood) is defined by race, religion, or property. (Blood and soil)
Fascism is the belief that politics and ideology are defined by one's enemies. It feeds off scapegoating and division, hatreds and fears, corruption and despair.
Fascism has contempt for facts and reason. Instead it emphasizes how willpower and violence can change reality, generate facts, and disrupt reason (which, of course, it CAN).
Fascism has contempt for politics, government, human solidarity, history, and the future. Instead it seduces its victims to believe that only one great leader can protect them from the forces of chaos that fascism helps to foster.
To differentiate communism from fascism, I use an analogy from handegg -- communism runs set plays, while fascism uses a hurry-up offense. One is paradisiacal; one is apocalyptic.
Communism is ideological; it wants everyone marching in step in perfect rows like busy worker bees. Liberalism, in contrast, is about liberty. It aims to prevent power from concentrating in a single place, whether it be commerce, government, religion, and so forth. It also aims to preserve plurality, understanding that everyone isn't always going to agree, preferring piecemeal, tentative, changeable solutions.
Fascism shares with conservatism a Romantic spirit. It feels like its back is against the wall, that everything is turning grey and is in decline, that time is running out, that one should make a last stand and go down swinging. Only what survives deserves to survive. In contrast, since conservatism has a steady-state vision of human beings constraining its ambitions, it prefers evolution over revolution, convention over confrontation. Conservatism has a monastic core. It values beauty, familiarity, privilege, leisure, holidays, that is, holy days, that which stands outside the nexus of praxis.
So I agree, communism and fascism aren't the same thing, and they aren't liberalism and conservatism either.
And fascists also seek to exploit the "brokenness" (that feeling of lack or defect) we all sometimes experience and use it to gin up fear and suspicion against other "broken" people that are isolated as scapegoats.
And fascists also tend to erase values and blur definitions by refusing any legitimate application of them.
Stalin and the Bolsheviks in Russia were certainly "like" fascists in many ways. And in some ways they were even worse. They were more ruthless and efficient about state destruction during WWII. They killed way more of their own citizens than the Nazis ever did. Same for other fascist regimes like Franco's Spain and Mussolini's Italy: they never killed as many of their own citizens as did Stalin or Mao.
But I don't see what your point is. If you want to say there is no difference (outside of blood and soil?) between Stalin and Hitler, fine. If you want to say they're are no IMPORTANT differences between Fascism and other forms of totalitarianism, So what?
I assume you'd still be against a fascism whose definition included Stalin and Mao and maybe even contemporary China (?)
I ASSUME you wouldn't broaden YOUR definition to include Richard Nixon, Dwight Eisenhower, FDR, Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, Barak Obama, John McCain, Bush I or Bush II, Ralph Nadir, Bernie Sanders, or Kamala Harris?
I happen to think that the blood and soil aspect of fascism is quite important, but there are other ways to destroy democracy and the rule of law.
My point was clear. Fascism is a useless term if more than half of its definition could apply to the USSR and the Nazis. 99% of the time it's just used to smear the other side. George W Bush was called a fascist. Jonah Goldberg wrote a book called Liberal Fascism. It's a term that has long overstayed its usefulness.
People like Meghan Murphy and "TERFS" are big source of ire for the trans community, and they are solidly old school lefty feminists. So "fascism" is really getting far afield from the people criticizing trans politics. (Not to mention a lazy trope.)
That race transitioning will be the next fad is an interesting prediction. As the post points out, race dysmorphia has been around for a long time. One of the best famous examples is Michael Jackson's multiple surgeries. The suggestion that narcissism is the root of all dysmorphias is also an interesting idea that I had never considered. I would like to suggest that there is another factor that might be in play: psychological conflicts about categorical versus non-categorical views of one's self. Race is so obviously a multivariate continuum that attempts to place one's self in one racial category and not any other is a denial of of the race-as-a-continuum reality. And yet some people feel a strong need for such categorical thinking about themselves and/or others. Trump: Is Harris Indian or Black? First she was Indian, and now she says she's Black. My understanding of the tendency toward either/or, black-or-white, categorical thinking indicates discomfort with ambiguity, and represents a cognitive distortion, according to Aaron Beck, father of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. My own preferred term for trying to force everything into either/or categories is Manichean Thinking, after the Manichean worldview that sees everything as a battle between good and evil, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/cui-bono/202008/environmentalism-religion
To my mind, there is also an interesting reversal of either-or thinking, which is a resistance to being categorized with any label, even when categorizing might be appropriate. Walter Mischel railed against personality constructs for this reason, finding personality labels to be too constraining against freedom and insulting our ability to be flexible. I see folks who deny the binary nature of sex in that light. All of the various forms of nonbinary sexuality, in my view, are struggles for freedom, a resistance to being fixed into a permanent category. However, to the extent that these attempts are successful, they can create anxiety about one's sexual identify, ironically leading to placing oneself in a category such as "trans," "non-binary," etc. Clearly, what is needed is some reality-based therapy.
I was subconsciously thinking about Michael all throughout this article, but somehow, he never broached the waters of my awareness... I think in-between late-night writing sessions I dreamed that I already included him in this article, but somehow did not. Manichaean thinking is a much better term than black-and-white thinking, especially in this context.
This was a provocative read, and narcissism may be the mental illness of our time. TLP would agree.
But there is a good legal reason to sue doctors for transitioning people (even adults) and that is that so called gender affirming care has been shown to be deleterious and does not meet the “standard of care” threshold they are legally obligated to follow.
I agree the problem starts sooner but does anyone want conservatives meddling in friend groups?
Similarly there is a legal impetus behind trans-racialism (and also why it will not happen) which is the vast infrastructure of set-asides, contracts, and private laws set up by the Civil Rights Act that make it profitable to become anything but white.
Just as Native American guard tribal membership, minorities plugged into this deep well of money and privilege do not want to be watered down by entrants.
I don’t think India is a good example of how any of this works. It’s unique in extremely low intermarriage rates and has maintained caste distinctions for hundreds of years.
Medicine hasn't framed them as plastic surgeries they have been classified as medically necessary care for insurance purposes based on gender dysphoria without the evidence based to support it
Of course a huge number of institutions, business and culture at large has been moved by social contagion so it is not one thing. But medicine bears its own special blame, as it has abandoned its own ethical and safeguarding systems and has been the prime influencer of those parents you're so fast to blame. When teachers and doctors and culture at large colludes how hard does it become to make 'individual choices'.
My take: there are genuinely trans people, and then there are people who just feel something is odd about them, something is not working right. Various factors tend to push them in the direction of believing it is their gender. If I would be a teenager today, it would happen to me, I was an androgynous looking boy, who did not fit in, did not like manly things like watching competitive sports or engaging in any kind of competition. In todays world it would sound very logical that if I am so bad at being a boy, then maybe I am a girl.
This is why TERFs are angry, right? I mean if the reverse happens and a girl is very tomboyish, people will keep asking if she is really a girl? So strangely enough the whole thing tends in the direction of strict gender roles. Of course people can just declade themselves nonbinary and then do whatever they want, that is an option too.
You'll find on closer inspection the true trans lacks an essence or aetiology- that is there's no empirical method to determine who they are, though there are obviously people who report being happy pretending to be the other sex.
If you're curious about a typology of trans you'd want to look into autogynephiles and autistics, pretty far removed from 'true trans' narratives.
Autistics are “true trans” because they tend to be androgynous, so they can go either way. Also, in 2024 you still do not understand the difference between biological sex and social gender? It is trans gender, not trans sex. It is a gender role change.
Non conforming gender presentation is a different idea from transitioning due to dysphoria. To have true trans there must be something essential about the person that sets up the sense of disease with their biological body and justifies body modification via medical procedures. Or are you of the new school that thinks people should be able to choose whatever embodiment goals they want and get corresponding medical procedures?
Autistics struggle with identity full stop, they don't even really get society and relating regardless of gender. That doesn't mean we should medicalize them, it would be better just to accept gender non-conformity. The least womenly trans woman I have met are neurodivergent men. They basically just have long hair, that's the extent of their femininity.
Look, I know some folks who are pretty deep into the LGBTQ subculture, and they keep talking about a trans spectrum. Not an essence. Like, nonbinary folks are kind of half trans. Being so far down the trans spectrum that one gets bottom surgery is fairly rare. I know a trans man with a bigger beard than mine, had top surgery, breast removal, but no bottom surgery.
The way you talk about it - subculture, spectrum - it seems just like a consumer choice model. This is not the stable and immutable 'trans' gender identity that we heard so much about in the past (born in the wrong body). This shows that it is social contagion driving trans identification, which undermines the original justification for medical treatment and shows that trans is just an umbrella category of people who want to change their bodies- ie it doesn't explain or mean anything.
That is really the extreme end of the spectrum. Perhaps political activism or media likes to portray that because that sounds like the biggest deal? But if you just talk with a large number of LGBTQ people, most will be a bit gender non-conforming but bottom surgery will be rare. Top surgery i.e. breasts off is far more common and that too counts as a wrong body thing although often it is done just to prevent breast cancer.
Nah I don’t believe transracialism is « the next thing » for 3 reasons:
1) It is too ridiculous and has been mocked during the age of internet. The whole « slippery slope » argument of the right would become too true and kill the left progressives politically. Due to the natural selection of memes, progressives that include transrace stuff would die.
2) To have the « next thing » happen, you need the « current thing » to be culturally and legally won by progressives. For the first time, you have a solid coalition (90 iq chuds, gamers, trad larpers, real religious people, republican politicians and reasonable people) of anti-woke people working against wokeness. DEI stuff is getting removed in some places. There is the push for homeschooling, down of the image of universities and other cultural movements that might reduce the long term structural advantages of wokes. The total victory of trans+DEI stuff might never come.
3) People trying new looks that do not correspond to their race is not necessarily rooted in transracialism, as you already pointed out. In my opinion, it is actually an extreme minority.
"Transgenderism is too ridiculous and has been mocked during the age of Hollywood. It would kill the left progressives politically. Due to the natural selection of memes, progressives that include transgender stuff would die."
"People trying new looks that do not correspond to their gender is not necessarily rooted in transgenderism. It is actually an extreme minority."
The stuff about "woke is dying" is your best argument, but I don't think your arguments are very strong at all. If anything, homeschooling is evidence of increased polarization. Conservatives drop out of society and school and their voices aren't heard anymore.
I mean, I think this is just a question of degree. Trans racial stuffs feels ridicule to an extreme level. Maybe it was the same for transgender stuff 30 years ago but I can’t tell so I will stop with that. Now that I think about it, feminism did kind of help the transgender a lot from a rhetorical point of view with their whole « woman=social » thing. You have less of that for trans race.
I am the first one to cringe when I read « woke is dying » or that we are « past peak woke », but you have to admit that the right are taking this fight more seriously (probably too much and often in a wrong way tbh) than in previous decades. I can easily imagine that the whole transgender and race quota becomes a culture war issue for the next 20 years. You also have evidence that it is possible to kill a progressive « thing » with the whole pedo movement of french leftists in 1960-1980.
Nobody in western culture gives two shits about Dalit trying to be another 'race' as you define it - it wouldn't even be legible as a difference to 90% of people.
Got it. So jati are the 'race's here? Or at least coarse caste (Brahmin / Kshatriya etc)?
That's a highly idiosyncratic use of the term race in the context you are writing though. In North America, within the cultural understanding you are documenting, I'd argue that most would think of 'South Asian' as a race.
Great piece. I suspect you're right about trans-racialism being the next thing.
Regarding the increase in narcissism, I would view technology as a big factor.
- As transport improved leading to urban sprawl, older 'village' style living (with places of work, rest and play all combined) got broken apart into differing realms, leading to social fragmentation
- As screens became more dominant (first TVs, then computers, smartphones etc) people spent less and less time engaged in communal activities
- As the nature of work changed with technological growth (from practical to more office-based work) this drove more and more women into the workforce (and vice versa), degrading local community activities which were often led by stay at home wives
All of these social changes facilitated by technology have no doubt been for the betger. But they've also led to a world which feels less communal and more isolating. This has had negative impacts on mental health and other outcomes. But no-one will do anything about it because the positives clearly outweigh the negatives (and technology may find solutions for the negatives in the future anyway).
I think that changes in zoning (mixed use) has more to do with racial segregation than transportation technology. But it's fair to say that TV and the internet allows for more a atomized existence than was previously possible (outside of books).
I don’t expect trans racialism on the left to pass the BLM filter. BLM made a show of defiance when they tried to make inner city blacks wear masks in public, so the left quickly gave up. I would expect the BLM types to make a similar show of violence if trans racialism stepped on their turf, as it would no doubt be tempted to when competing for activist money.
I was referring to an incident after the protests died down, when a black person attacked a waiter in a city for trying to make them wear a mask. A BLM organization released a statement in favor of the black person and the mask mandate people quietly agreed with it.
It is a stretch to call the entire thing premeditated. What will probably happen is that, at some point, inner city blacks and transracialists will come to blows on an overlapping issue, a BLM chapter or future equivalent will come out in support of the inner city blacks, and progressives will kowtow to the BLM statement.
Just like how progressives defend women when males enter their spaces? Think again. They will always put the ideology first. "Trans racials are more oppressed than you are". "You have cis-racial privilege".
They'll stack entire boards of directors with white men and claim that it's diverse because some of them are "trans-black", "trans-women" and "queer". They'll get around their own quotas with fake categories.
I question the example you use anon but as a general matter i think this article (and the entire hanania, Karlin EHC—mass subsahran migration is imminent but somehow the right poses a bigger threat—crew) underrates how jealously blacks will guard their privileges
@Michel djerzinski: I never said that "mass subsahran migration is imminent," and I explicitly state in this article that black people are going to become more racist over time.
You forgot about how black women straighten their hair! Michelle Obama wore a transracial hairstyle for years. How many black women are never seen without having their hair straightened lmao. What’s more, hair straightening is bad for health, which is even more like transsexuals! The NYT investigated the health harms: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/13/magazine/hair-relaxers-cancer-risk.html, then they ran this feature about Serena Williams, with her hair straightened and bleached lol https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/15/magazine/serena-williams-interview.html
Good point about adults being able to vote but purportedly not being able to judge the consequences of transsexual hormones and surgery. Ive also been bothered by the disconnect between transsexual hormones (which are allowed under the supervision of the loosest doctor you can find) and anabolic steroids. Sure, people can overdo the latter. But like there’s definitely dosages where the risks overlap. Plenty of incoherence to go around.
I need some skin *darkening* products, for my vitiligo.
Sorry yea, I just dropped in to say that.
"Her parents sheltered her by homeschooling her, then thrust her into public school while she was going through puberty. I could go on a whole rant about how this is essentially a form of child abuse"
This should be your next article. Across your articles I've read, I don't agree with certain interpretations, but I always appreciate how you seem to try to consider different perspectives.
- Your list summarizing 8 possible contributors lost the capitalism/classism bullet from previously in the article.
- I also feel like you're a little premature or incomplete in your representation of higher incidents of NPD in the transgender community: The difference between adaptive & maladaptive traits, and how experts generally agree that there are two subtypes (vulnerable & grandiose), despite the current DSM guidelines. You admit yourself that this is a vulnerable population earlier in your article and without representing that distinction in subtypes it's a mischaracterization or at least overgeneralization. Less thorough members of your audience may jump to conclusions at this.
I've gotten into a really bad habit of writing dozens of articles, not publishing them, going back to edit them, getting lost in the weeds... I would love to interview someone who has transitioned from homeschooling to public school. I personally identify myself as someone higher in narcissistic traits than average, but I agree that there is a big difference between types of narcissism: vulnerable narcissism, introverted vs extroverted narcissism. I have an article planned on the psychology of stalkers which goes into this.
This is brilliant. Thank you, and please keep at it!
Surely it has occurred to you that this could and should be split up into perhaps as much as a dozen separate posts - each of which you seem quite capable of expanding and developing (or not) as it seems suitable.
Not all right wingers are fascists, but fascist thinking has (right now) a more piercing grip on right wing populists and “influencers” than it does on some “broken” people on the left. This is just one reason why your type of work is important. Your type of work not only helps inoculate some against fascism and maybe even works as something of a therapeutic to those infected with fascist ideas (but who have not totalized their identification with fascism), it can even help any of us to deal with our own “brokenness” and how we can choose to react to the “brokenness” of others.
The term “brokenness” is indeed problematic when applied to any human subject, but all of us can sometimes subjectively “identify” with that modifier in different ways that are not equally unhelpful. For instance, when someone is being possessed/occupied/colonized/infected with fascist ideas, it might be better to think of them as “broken” than as stupid, evil, or hard core. “Brokenness” is only one metaphor for the (near?) universal susceptibility to the sensation that we are “missing” (“lacking”) something though we can choose to understand this sensation as being the result of our own being defective, cheated, deprived, or in the process of creation.
Perhaps you don’t think some people are working hard to undermine or frustrate the democratic rule of law via popular authoritarian movements based on blood and soil or religious identification in many parts of the globe right now.
Perhaps you don’t think that some people are working hard to undermine the democratic rule of law via popular authoritarianism in the US right now?
That’s fine.
You can believe or disbelieve in whatever you want.
I happen to believe that the democratic rule of law is under attack in the US and many other places across the globe right now. I happen to believe that what is going on is very similar to what was going on in the 1930s. I happen to believe that “fascist” is an apt term to describe the tendencies that are helping this happen, but I am open to a better term.
How would you describe, categorize, or label the current attacks on the democratic rule of law? Do you know deny this is happening? Do you care? Or do you think the threat to the democratic rule of law is coming just as much from the extreme left as from the extreme right?
I don’t think you are being clear at all.
https://open.substack.com/pub/joepanzica/p/how-trump-wins-legally?r=f79z7&utm_medium=ios
Just so I am clear.
The recurrent criticism of the right in these articles tends to be that it is not fascist enough to be coherent. Not that it’s dangerously fascist
@anonymous: Fascism and incoherence can be simultaneously dangerous. I explicitly call out fascism as dangerous in my most popular and recent articles.
Is fascism with a coherent ethos more dangerous than incoherent populism that would only create a void where there is a societal myth, in that case?
This was the first post of yours I came across so (as presumptuous as I am) I don’t want to make too many presumptions about the rest of your writing
Good question.
To me "fascism" means contempt for the rule of law as something that might even begin to approach any reasonable idea of justice.
Fascism encompasses the idea that human values have no existence except for what can be enforced by violence or the threat of violence.
Fascism is also the belief that citizenship (or even personhood) is defined by race, religion, or property. (Blood and soil)
Fascism is the belief that politics and ideology are defined by one's enemies. It feeds off scapegoating and division, hatreds and fears, corruption and despair.
Fascism has contempt for facts and reason. Instead it emphasizes how willpower and violence can change reality, generate facts, and disrupt reason (which, of course, it CAN).
Fascism has contempt for politics, government, human solidarity, history, and the future. Instead it seduces its victims to believe that only one great leader can protect them from the forces of chaos that fascism helps to foster.
This is a good starting point.
To differentiate communism from fascism, I use an analogy from handegg -- communism runs set plays, while fascism uses a hurry-up offense. One is paradisiacal; one is apocalyptic.
Communism is ideological; it wants everyone marching in step in perfect rows like busy worker bees. Liberalism, in contrast, is about liberty. It aims to prevent power from concentrating in a single place, whether it be commerce, government, religion, and so forth. It also aims to preserve plurality, understanding that everyone isn't always going to agree, preferring piecemeal, tentative, changeable solutions.
Fascism shares with conservatism a Romantic spirit. It feels like its back is against the wall, that everything is turning grey and is in decline, that time is running out, that one should make a last stand and go down swinging. Only what survives deserves to survive. In contrast, since conservatism has a steady-state vision of human beings constraining its ambitions, it prefers evolution over revolution, convention over confrontation. Conservatism has a monastic core. It values beauty, familiarity, privilege, leisure, holidays, that is, holy days, that which stands outside the nexus of praxis.
So I agree, communism and fascism aren't the same thing, and they aren't liberalism and conservatism either.
And fascists also seek to exploit the "brokenness" (that feeling of lack or defect) we all sometimes experience and use it to gin up fear and suspicion against other "broken" people that are isolated as scapegoats.
And fascists also tend to erase values and blur definitions by refusing any legitimate application of them.
Stalin and the Bolsheviks in Russia were certainly "like" fascists in many ways. And in some ways they were even worse. They were more ruthless and efficient about state destruction during WWII. They killed way more of their own citizens than the Nazis ever did. Same for other fascist regimes like Franco's Spain and Mussolini's Italy: they never killed as many of their own citizens as did Stalin or Mao.
But I don't see what your point is. If you want to say there is no difference (outside of blood and soil?) between Stalin and Hitler, fine. If you want to say they're are no IMPORTANT differences between Fascism and other forms of totalitarianism, So what?
I assume you'd still be against a fascism whose definition included Stalin and Mao and maybe even contemporary China (?)
I ASSUME you wouldn't broaden YOUR definition to include Richard Nixon, Dwight Eisenhower, FDR, Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, Barak Obama, John McCain, Bush I or Bush II, Ralph Nadir, Bernie Sanders, or Kamala Harris?
I happen to think that the blood and soil aspect of fascism is quite important, but there are other ways to destroy democracy and the rule of law.
My point was clear. Fascism is a useless term if more than half of its definition could apply to the USSR and the Nazis. 99% of the time it's just used to smear the other side. George W Bush was called a fascist. Jonah Goldberg wrote a book called Liberal Fascism. It's a term that has long overstayed its usefulness.
There are other ways to undermine and destroy the democratic rule of law. I'm just not as worried about them (right NOW) as I am about fascism.
People like Meghan Murphy and "TERFS" are big source of ire for the trans community, and they are solidly old school lefty feminists. So "fascism" is really getting far afield from the people criticizing trans politics. (Not to mention a lazy trope.)
That race transitioning will be the next fad is an interesting prediction. As the post points out, race dysmorphia has been around for a long time. One of the best famous examples is Michael Jackson's multiple surgeries. The suggestion that narcissism is the root of all dysmorphias is also an interesting idea that I had never considered. I would like to suggest that there is another factor that might be in play: psychological conflicts about categorical versus non-categorical views of one's self. Race is so obviously a multivariate continuum that attempts to place one's self in one racial category and not any other is a denial of of the race-as-a-continuum reality. And yet some people feel a strong need for such categorical thinking about themselves and/or others. Trump: Is Harris Indian or Black? First she was Indian, and now she says she's Black. My understanding of the tendency toward either/or, black-or-white, categorical thinking indicates discomfort with ambiguity, and represents a cognitive distortion, according to Aaron Beck, father of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. My own preferred term for trying to force everything into either/or categories is Manichean Thinking, after the Manichean worldview that sees everything as a battle between good and evil, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/cui-bono/202008/environmentalism-religion
To my mind, there is also an interesting reversal of either-or thinking, which is a resistance to being categorized with any label, even when categorizing might be appropriate. Walter Mischel railed against personality constructs for this reason, finding personality labels to be too constraining against freedom and insulting our ability to be flexible. I see folks who deny the binary nature of sex in that light. All of the various forms of nonbinary sexuality, in my view, are struggles for freedom, a resistance to being fixed into a permanent category. However, to the extent that these attempts are successful, they can create anxiety about one's sexual identify, ironically leading to placing oneself in a category such as "trans," "non-binary," etc. Clearly, what is needed is some reality-based therapy.
I was subconsciously thinking about Michael all throughout this article, but somehow, he never broached the waters of my awareness... I think in-between late-night writing sessions I dreamed that I already included him in this article, but somehow did not. Manichaean thinking is a much better term than black-and-white thinking, especially in this context.
This was a provocative read, and narcissism may be the mental illness of our time. TLP would agree.
But there is a good legal reason to sue doctors for transitioning people (even adults) and that is that so called gender affirming care has been shown to be deleterious and does not meet the “standard of care” threshold they are legally obligated to follow.
I agree the problem starts sooner but does anyone want conservatives meddling in friend groups?
Similarly there is a legal impetus behind trans-racialism (and also why it will not happen) which is the vast infrastructure of set-asides, contracts, and private laws set up by the Civil Rights Act that make it profitable to become anything but white.
Just as Native American guard tribal membership, minorities plugged into this deep well of money and privilege do not want to be watered down by entrants.
I don’t think India is a good example of how any of this works. It’s unique in extremely low intermarriage rates and has maintained caste distinctions for hundreds of years.
Can you explain TLP? Do you also propose banning plastic surgery, where those surgeries produce "deleterious" effects?
TLP is The Last Psychiatrist I believe
Medicine hasn't framed them as plastic surgeries they have been classified as medically necessary care for insurance purposes based on gender dysphoria without the evidence based to support it
Of course a huge number of institutions, business and culture at large has been moved by social contagion so it is not one thing. But medicine bears its own special blame, as it has abandoned its own ethical and safeguarding systems and has been the prime influencer of those parents you're so fast to blame. When teachers and doctors and culture at large colludes how hard does it become to make 'individual choices'.
My take: there are genuinely trans people, and then there are people who just feel something is odd about them, something is not working right. Various factors tend to push them in the direction of believing it is their gender. If I would be a teenager today, it would happen to me, I was an androgynous looking boy, who did not fit in, did not like manly things like watching competitive sports or engaging in any kind of competition. In todays world it would sound very logical that if I am so bad at being a boy, then maybe I am a girl.
This is why TERFs are angry, right? I mean if the reverse happens and a girl is very tomboyish, people will keep asking if she is really a girl? So strangely enough the whole thing tends in the direction of strict gender roles. Of course people can just declade themselves nonbinary and then do whatever they want, that is an option too.
You'll find on closer inspection the true trans lacks an essence or aetiology- that is there's no empirical method to determine who they are, though there are obviously people who report being happy pretending to be the other sex.
If you're curious about a typology of trans you'd want to look into autogynephiles and autistics, pretty far removed from 'true trans' narratives.
Autistics are “true trans” because they tend to be androgynous, so they can go either way. Also, in 2024 you still do not understand the difference between biological sex and social gender? It is trans gender, not trans sex. It is a gender role change.
Non conforming gender presentation is a different idea from transitioning due to dysphoria. To have true trans there must be something essential about the person that sets up the sense of disease with their biological body and justifies body modification via medical procedures. Or are you of the new school that thinks people should be able to choose whatever embodiment goals they want and get corresponding medical procedures?
Autistics struggle with identity full stop, they don't even really get society and relating regardless of gender. That doesn't mean we should medicalize them, it would be better just to accept gender non-conformity. The least womenly trans woman I have met are neurodivergent men. They basically just have long hair, that's the extent of their femininity.
Look, I know some folks who are pretty deep into the LGBTQ subculture, and they keep talking about a trans spectrum. Not an essence. Like, nonbinary folks are kind of half trans. Being so far down the trans spectrum that one gets bottom surgery is fairly rare. I know a trans man with a bigger beard than mine, had top surgery, breast removal, but no bottom surgery.
The way you talk about it - subculture, spectrum - it seems just like a consumer choice model. This is not the stable and immutable 'trans' gender identity that we heard so much about in the past (born in the wrong body). This shows that it is social contagion driving trans identification, which undermines the original justification for medical treatment and shows that trans is just an umbrella category of people who want to change their bodies- ie it doesn't explain or mean anything.
That is really the extreme end of the spectrum. Perhaps political activism or media likes to portray that because that sounds like the biggest deal? But if you just talk with a large number of LGBTQ people, most will be a bit gender non-conforming but bottom surgery will be rare. Top surgery i.e. breasts off is far more common and that too counts as a wrong body thing although often it is done just to prevent breast cancer.
Nah I don’t believe transracialism is « the next thing » for 3 reasons:
1) It is too ridiculous and has been mocked during the age of internet. The whole « slippery slope » argument of the right would become too true and kill the left progressives politically. Due to the natural selection of memes, progressives that include transrace stuff would die.
2) To have the « next thing » happen, you need the « current thing » to be culturally and legally won by progressives. For the first time, you have a solid coalition (90 iq chuds, gamers, trad larpers, real religious people, republican politicians and reasonable people) of anti-woke people working against wokeness. DEI stuff is getting removed in some places. There is the push for homeschooling, down of the image of universities and other cultural movements that might reduce the long term structural advantages of wokes. The total victory of trans+DEI stuff might never come.
3) People trying new looks that do not correspond to their race is not necessarily rooted in transracialism, as you already pointed out. In my opinion, it is actually an extreme minority.
Here's what you would be saying 20 years ago:
"Transgenderism is too ridiculous and has been mocked during the age of Hollywood. It would kill the left progressives politically. Due to the natural selection of memes, progressives that include transgender stuff would die."
"People trying new looks that do not correspond to their gender is not necessarily rooted in transgenderism. It is actually an extreme minority."
The stuff about "woke is dying" is your best argument, but I don't think your arguments are very strong at all. If anything, homeschooling is evidence of increased polarization. Conservatives drop out of society and school and their voices aren't heard anymore.
I mean, I think this is just a question of degree. Trans racial stuffs feels ridicule to an extreme level. Maybe it was the same for transgender stuff 30 years ago but I can’t tell so I will stop with that. Now that I think about it, feminism did kind of help the transgender a lot from a rhetorical point of view with their whole « woman=social » thing. You have less of that for trans race.
I am the first one to cringe when I read « woke is dying » or that we are « past peak woke », but you have to admit that the right are taking this fight more seriously (probably too much and often in a wrong way tbh) than in previous decades. I can easily imagine that the whole transgender and race quota becomes a culture war issue for the next 20 years. You also have evidence that it is possible to kill a progressive « thing » with the whole pedo movement of french leftists in 1960-1980.
> The consumption of skin whitening products in India is also evidence of a form of trans-racial dysmorphia.
Are you sure this is evidence of transracial dysmorphia, and not just intraracial ladder climbing/aspiration?
There has always been a hierarchy within the Indian race, one in which lighter skin has been viewed favorably.
There's no such thing as an "Indian race." That idea is antithetical to both genetic evidence as well as traditional Vedic teachings.
Nobody in western culture gives two shits about Dalit trying to be another 'race' as you define it - it wouldn't even be legible as a difference to 90% of people.
Got it. So jati are the 'race's here? Or at least coarse caste (Brahmin / Kshatriya etc)?
That's a highly idiosyncratic use of the term race in the context you are writing though. In North America, within the cultural understanding you are documenting, I'd argue that most would think of 'South Asian' as a race.
Great piece. I suspect you're right about trans-racialism being the next thing.
Regarding the increase in narcissism, I would view technology as a big factor.
- As transport improved leading to urban sprawl, older 'village' style living (with places of work, rest and play all combined) got broken apart into differing realms, leading to social fragmentation
- As screens became more dominant (first TVs, then computers, smartphones etc) people spent less and less time engaged in communal activities
- As the nature of work changed with technological growth (from practical to more office-based work) this drove more and more women into the workforce (and vice versa), degrading local community activities which were often led by stay at home wives
All of these social changes facilitated by technology have no doubt been for the betger. But they've also led to a world which feels less communal and more isolating. This has had negative impacts on mental health and other outcomes. But no-one will do anything about it because the positives clearly outweigh the negatives (and technology may find solutions for the negatives in the future anyway).
I think that changes in zoning (mixed use) has more to do with racial segregation than transportation technology. But it's fair to say that TV and the internet allows for more a atomized existence than was previously possible (outside of books).
Perhaps there will be ‘race transplants’ someday.
I don’t expect trans racialism on the left to pass the BLM filter. BLM made a show of defiance when they tried to make inner city blacks wear masks in public, so the left quickly gave up. I would expect the BLM types to make a similar show of violence if trans racialism stepped on their turf, as it would no doubt be tempted to when competing for activist money.
These are wild assertions without evidence. Plenty of black people wore masks, and they didn't engage in "violence" against "mask mandates."
I was referring to an incident after the protests died down, when a black person attacked a waiter in a city for trying to make them wear a mask. A BLM organization released a statement in favor of the black person and the mask mandate people quietly agreed with it.
Edit: found an article about the incident : https://www.nationalreview.com/news/after-altercation-at-restaurant-black-lives-matter-claims-nyc-vaccine-mandate-is-being-weaponized/amp/ . I was incorrect in saying it was about mask mandates instead of vaccine mandates
@anonymous: The idea that somehow "BLM" as an "organization" used "violence" to defeat "vaccine mandates" strikes me as a bit of a stretch.
It is a stretch to call the entire thing premeditated. What will probably happen is that, at some point, inner city blacks and transracialists will come to blows on an overlapping issue, a BLM chapter or future equivalent will come out in support of the inner city blacks, and progressives will kowtow to the BLM statement.
@anonymous: "come to blows" no, cultural and political evolution is not determined by african street fights, sorry.
The hierarchy for the progressive caste system does seem driven by informal and spontaneous events rather than top down literature.
Just like how progressives defend women when males enter their spaces? Think again. They will always put the ideology first. "Trans racials are more oppressed than you are". "You have cis-racial privilege".
Women coming last makes logical sense, they are a numerical majority and not prone to violence
They'll stack entire boards of directors with white men and claim that it's diverse because some of them are "trans-black", "trans-women" and "queer". They'll get around their own quotas with fake categories.
I question the example you use anon but as a general matter i think this article (and the entire hanania, Karlin EHC—mass subsahran migration is imminent but somehow the right poses a bigger threat—crew) underrates how jealously blacks will guard their privileges
@Michel djerzinski: I never said that "mass subsahran migration is imminent," and I explicitly state in this article that black people are going to become more racist over time.