Sexual Duality Delusion

I wrote this post up in late November, and decided not to post it because I thought it might be too abrasive.

However, I changed my mind, after watching the mirror of InternetAristocrat's video "Cis-Scum".

The female brony blogger that Oleg Volk sometimes links to has come out as a man. Well, actually, it's all very complicated, so read about it yourself, I guess.

My immediate reaction to this comes in three parts, followed by a larger monologue on exactly what in the hell I think is going on here:

1. While I don't recognize the condition, I don't hate "transgendered" people (those who feel they are actually a member of the opposite sex; this post does not concern people with ambiguous genitalia) or feel repulsed by what they think about themselves. What does disturb me is when I see someone who has mutilated their body in a failed attempt to convince others that they're not really the sex they are, but it's much the same feeling as seeing someone who's been horrifically burned or who is grotesquely fat. Not to insult burn victims, of course. This is a natural reaction that possesses me against my will. My opinions on the matter are entirely separate.

2. You want to go by the name "Erin" online, be my guest. I go by a pseudonym, too.

3. Just because I think (you'll see) that transgenders are most likely deluded doesn't mean it can't hurt. On the contrary, delusion can be one of the most damaging conditions. I am sympathetic.

In the interests of getting inside your head a little, I will play your game. OK, I wake up and, just like Tom Hanks in Big, I find myself staring back at someone I don't recognize. How do I handle this? Well that would be fairly extraordinary. I might inquire to a professional about it. Or perhaps a wise-looking black man with a salt-and-pepper beard.

Did you wake up and suddenly not recognize yourself, though? I suspect not. I suspect, like me, you woke up one day when you were in middle school with a dark hair or two growing on your face. Hardly a blue-furred facelift. You looked much the same as you always did.

Maybe you didn't look the way you wanted to, or your mental image and reflection didn't match up. Loads of people have this little quirk of psychology, very few of them write extended blog posts about it. When I think of myself, it doesn't match very closely with how I actually look. Big deal.

You're disgusted with your own looks? Lots of people have this problem. Even if there's such a thing as having a female psychology and a male physiology, the fact that you find your body repulsive probably has little to do with it. After all, do you find other men repulsive? I don't mean in an intimate sense, but rather walking down the street, if you pass a bearded fellow wearing shorts, a t-shirt and a wristwatch, do you want to shy away in revulsion as if they had some gross deformity? I reserve suspicion that you do not.

It would not shock me to learn that you have BDD. Looking at yourself in the mirror and wanting to vomit isn't normal, and that must have been a helluva time growing up. Regarding your own name as something fake and unworthy is a sign of underlying distress (one of my girlfriends goes by a male name, and functions normally). I sympathize, sincerely, I do.

Finally, are you really psychologically a woman? You like guns and comic books and you
get a feeling in your loins when you see a woman (strange, most of the transgendered M-t-Fs I've seen are "lesbians"). Maybe you're a bit effeminate, but that does not a condition make.

You are a man, not a woman, and whatever psychological issues you have, it's up to you to fight through them, not to indulge them by playing pretend. Do you think that, in the long run, getting your friends to act as though you were something you're not will help you overcome your issues? Why do you think that shunning your birth name and saying you're a woman on the inside fixes the problem? The problem isn't you having the wrong name or body, it's the revulsion you have for yourself.

You said that you don't want to mutilate yourself through surgery. This is good. This is sane. You have the body you were born with, and however you feel, you should work with it. Others will, though. I've seen people that have gone under the knife, and they didn't transform themselves into something beautiful and accepted, they made it worse; they actually turned themselves into monsters. What if it's a delusion? What if you are male to the core, and you just have a body image problem? What if all transgendered people are? Are we as a culture encouraging people to mutilate themselves in service to neuroses? How horrifying is that thought?

Finally, Erin, though I don't expect we'll meet, I will not treat you as if you're a woman. I will call you "Erin" if you like, but only the same as you might call me "Wilhelm". The pronoun set I use for you is "he/him/his". I might say, "that Erin fellow is a good man, and good company, besides." I will expect you to act much the same as I would expect any man. If there's a draft, you will go to war (oh, wait, I guess that's bi-gender now. What a silly time we live in.) If there's a vote, I expect you to vote (wait, that too?). Hold on. Chivalry's dead? Men don't pay the bills? Well, shit, I guess in this day and age, I'm to treat women and men much the same, save for the pronouns I use.

Society's clearly disintegrating before me, I don't have time for delusional men who wish they were gay women!

Ice Ages Past and To Come

My opinion on climate change has always been that if you politicize the issue, no one will be able to even figure out what the hell actually is going on and, impending disaster or no, it will quickly turn into a contest of dogma.

Was the dogma wrong the entire time? Hmmm. As counter-revolutionaries living naked in our book-strewn huts in the forests far outside what they're calling "civilization" these days, what do we make of this?

Of course it's a DailyMail science article, so for all I know it has nothing to do with reality.

The stains on her white armor simply won't buff out

How many deaths is USG responsible for?

One of the great successes of US propaganda is the widespread myth that the United States and its close allies were the good guys, because Hitler killed people and they didn't.

One may point out that Stalin killed loads of people, but they will often be met with arguments that we had to side with the lesser of two evils to defeat the greater, never mind that Stalin's crimes were greater than Hitler's, and Hitler's were largely unknown (and uncommitted) at the time war was declared. Hmm.

Some reactionary elements have argued that the USG should be held partially accountable for the crimes of the Soviet regime, as it was to a large degree an enabler. This is a very grey area, but the most interesting part of the issue is that USG herself is responsible for untold mass murder and other heinous crimes, all of which is strictly ignored by official history.

Herbert Butterfield rocking out in a mask of red and black paint

I'm hearing echoes of Butterfield in this:

As you sit in your quiet home, surrounded by peace, comfort and civilization...

Do you, listener, remember those memories...

Grand and tearful, which still, after hundreds of years,

Remain now radiant with the brightness of sunlight,

And now darkening, like indelible bloodstains...

The variegated pages of history.

Can your thoughts, torpid with repose,

Transport themselves back to the horrors and joys of the past...

Not straying indifferently from one thing to another which excites your curiosity,

But taking a warm and vital interest, as if you yourself stood in the midst of those struggles,

Now long since fought out... bled in them, conquered or fell in them,

And felt your heart beat with hope or apprehension according as fortune smiled or betrayed...

Standing on the heights of history, looking far around the wild arena of human destiny,

Can you transfer yourself into the well of the past?

A life physically buried and decayed, but spiritually inmost,

Which constitutes the essence and substance of history...

Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart,

Waging all things in the balance of reason?

Is not rather the genius of history like an eternally blooming maiden, full of fire,

With a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?

Therefore, if you have the capacity to suffer or rejoice with the generation that had been...

To hate with them... to love with them... to be transported to admire, to despise,

To curse as they have done - in a word:

To live among them with your whole heart and not alone with your cold, reflecting judgement...

... then follow me.

I will lead you down into the well.

My hand is weak and my sketch humble, but your heart will guide you better than I.

Upon that I rely... and begin.

 

Dat Finnish accent.

Portrait of an American Woman

Remember that burning car I mentioned earlier? He's in it.

No wonder American families aren't having kids; the men already have to deal with their juvenile, entitled wives.

Popular Science is Bad Science II: Decline

Your great-grandfathers split the atom for the first time.

Hikikomori - The Next Generation

Literally.

As welfare increases, good jobs with sane employers become harder to find, and home comforts become ever more in reach, hikikomori - in the US called "basement-dwellers," "neckbeards," and "80% of the My Little Pony franchise fanbase" - will remain on the rise.

This isn't a bang. It's not a whimper, either. Shall the world end with a squick?