Human rights… or special privileges?
Unpacking the unique demands of an activist group
As described in this recent article, I was recently suspended from Twitter for expressing an idea deemed “hate speech.” I discovered the suspension Tuesday, July 19; it is Saturday, July 23 as I write this. After having gathered a few perspectives from others who’ve been through this, I’ve decided it’s worth it for me to delete the offending tweet in order to get my account back. But not without capturing the original concept here, so that it can still be shared.
Among the most infamous of Orwellian TRA refrains, alongside “Trans women are women,” is the slogan, “Trans rights are human rights.” The offending tweet questioned this assertion by unpacking a series of common demands and expectations associated with the movement—that is, what they mean when they say “rights.”
My argument does not call into question anyone’s basic human rights. And it certainly doesn’t meet Twitter’s own criteria for “hate speech;” it does not “promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of … gender identity.” There was certainly no threatening or promotion of violence, and the notion of harassment here would be hard to make a case for. The post was not directed at any individual; it does not even insult anyone. It simply questions whether a special interest group’s definition of “rights” aligns with normal collective understandings of human rights.
Although I can’t access the original thread, I’ll do my best to recreate it here from memory, and expand on its original ideas with the freedom of long-form writing on my blog, absent 240-character restrictions.
Without further ado, let’s get into
The offending ideas
“Trans rights are human rights.” Really? Let’s examine.
(⬆ that’s what got reported as “hate speech.”)
This is a convenient but grossly misleading mantra of the trans rights movement.
Human rights sounds like a good thing all reasonable people should want. The implication is that anyone who doesn’t support human rights is a monster. But what do trans rights activists really mean when they say “rights?”
What follows is a list of demands and expectations Genderists often mean when they say they want “rights,” followed by deep critiques of those notions.
The “right” to self-diagnose and have doctors and therapists agree with you.
No one else considers this a “right” that they are entitled to, or that would even be in their best interest. Most people understand that although the medical industry has its share of corruption, healthcare professionals nonetheless possess an expertise that patients typically lack, and that seeking this expertise is necessary and helpful. A patient may have done her own research and come up with ideas of possible diagnoses that might explain her symptoms, but she waits for a professional to confirm, rule out or adjust her conceptual framework, and share further relevant knowledge she couldn’t have come up with herself. She is in the driver’s seat of her own care in that she is free to doubts, turn down treatment options, and seek a second opinion or alternative form of care; but this doesn’t mean that her self-diagnosis is correct, and it doesn’t obligate any professional to endorse her narratives if those don’t align with their own expertise.
As a mental health professional, I’ve made clear that this is not only far from the standard of care for how we treat any other condition, but would normally constitute malpractice.
Most normal people do not possess even half the hubris it takes to attempt to exert this kind of power and control over a medical professional, assuming they know better than doctors and rewriting professionals’ job descriptions to accommodate their whims. For TRAs, this hubris, in combination with providers’ cowardice, will ultimately come at the expense of their own health.
This “right” is not something we see people feeling entitled to exert elsewhere… except in people with mental disorders such as Narcissistic, Histrionic, or Borderline Personality Disorders, Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy, Factitious Disorder, Illness Anxiety Disorder, and Malingering. In all of those cases, however, a truly skilled professional will recognize what is happening and set limits, not cower to demands.
The “right” to flip the switch, at dizzying speed, between narratives of pathology and depathology, depending on what suits your demands at the moment, all the while demanding that healthcare industries follow your lead, prescribe at your whims, abandon the practice of gatekeeping powerful mind and body altering substances, and jump to the most extreme forms of “treatment.”
Sometimes, “gender affirming care” is framed as medically necessary treatment for the mental health condition—that is to say, the pathology, or illness—of gender dysphoria. In fact, despite the radical invasiveness of these “treatments,” they are considered the only appropriate form of treatment for this mental illness. Talk therapy is deemed inadequate, and we are told that this illness is so severe that without urgent access to these radical treatments of hormones and surgeries, youth will surely die of suicide; that’s how bad it is. By these standards, the pathology of gender dysphoria is not only a real diagnosis, but a profoundly serious one. If nothing less invasive than permanent physical alterations is sufficient to save the patient from death, the condition must be extreme indeed. Cancer comes to mind; the treatments involve poisonous chemicals and painful surgeries, and come at a high cost to overall health. Only a severe disease with a high mortality rate warrants such powerful and costly interventions.
Other times, “queer theorists” push the insane, radical idea that we should each have the “freedom” to “choose” our gender, and that there is nothing pathological at all about identifying as a gender that is different from one’s biological sex. They want children to believe this: When you were born, silly, incompetent doctors made the mistake of “assigning” your sex. It’s more than okay if you “discover” that they got it wrong; what do those transphobic doctors know, anyway? It should really be their job to give you the treatments you decide you need; after all, you know who you are. Now, don’t you want to join the rainbow sparkle club and be special like us?
This narrative is entirely about de-pathologizing and de-stigmatizing. We are to accept alternative “gender identities” as completely normal and healthy things to be celebrated and encouraged in anyone, the younger the better. Meanwhile, the normal developmental process of puberty is framed as a preventable trauma we should ideally spare as many youth from as possible. All youth should be brought up gender neutral or fluid, taught about identities and pronouns from an early age, and be repeatedly shown that it is up to them to choose their “gender identity” (the more unusual, the better; cis is for muggles—oh wait, we don’t use that term anymore, because of that bigot JKR). Once children have made this “choice,” they will be celebrated, and the “identity” will be presented to healthcare professionals as Truth that now needs to be accommodated by puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries Right Away, Please, Thank You Very Much.
The contradictions between narratives of pathology and de-pathology are profound, and the speed at which gender ideologues will flip between these two vastly different narratives is dizzying. The only logic that governs which narrative prevails is which one suits their agenda at the moment.
This so-called “right” to control the narrative is not something we witness in any other group… besides abusers.
Similarly,
The “right” to be prescribed drugs of your choice with minimal gatekeeping.
Gender ideologues expect to be ushered through the medical system as quickly and seamlessly as possible so that they may access powerful mind and body altering substances that they, not doctors, determine are appropriate drugs for them.
This so-called “right” is not something we see in any other group… except addicts, who manipulate corrupt or incompetent doctors into overprescribing opiates, amphetamines, and other scheduled drugs.
And,
The “right” to have taxpayer dollars pay for your desired cosmetic surgeries.
Under the narrative of “gender affirming care” — that is, the pathology narrative employed when it suits ideologues’ desires — these drugs and surgeries are considered “medically necessary” such that they should be covered by insurance plans. When Medicaid covers these “treatments,” that is your taxpayer dollars at work. And when private healthcare plans cover them, some of that money is coming out of the monthly premiums you and your employers pay.
Again, we don’t see others feeling entitled to this “right.” Even the most vain and self-absorbed of cosmetic surgery customers don’t expect the rest of us to pay for their desired alterations. Cosmetic surgery is a multi-billion-dollar industry. For decades, its primary customers, women, have sought facelifts, breast enhancements or reductions, butt implants, liposuction, laser hair removal, and many other procedures out of their own pockets. We only expect insurers to consider paying for cosmetic surgeries in cases such as helping burn victims and breast cancer survivors regain a more normal appearance for their own dignity after suffering the traumas of their respective ailments that were not self-inflicted.
Even the most medically necessary treatments often come at too steep a cost to patients. It is truly shocking that healthcare plans so readily cover so much of the cost of these unnecessary, harmful “treatments,” driving up the cost of healthcare for the rest of us while often creating shortages of, and waitlists for, hormone based treatments for those who need them (eg. women suffering severe menopause symptoms; people with disorders of sexual development who need to take exogenous hormones because their bodies don’t naturally produce them).
The “right” to use suicide threats to get what you want
I’ve treated a great many suicidal patients. And some of them were quite vocal about their distress. But the two people I’ve actually lost to suicide were some of the quietest.
One was a young man at an inpatient facility I worked at early in my counseling career. Most of our residents had some form of psychosis. Many had been hospitalized for previous suicide attempts. Many had traits of personality disorders and were quite a handful behavior-wise. He was not one of those. He was among the quietest, the least expressive of needs, the least dramatic.
Another was an old friend of mine in California. He was actually a brilliant clinical psychologist who had helped many people save their marriages, talked other suicidal people off of the ledge, and offered invaluable wisdom to another old friend as her supervisor. He, too, was a quiet sufferer. I recall a deep darkness in his eyes I could never quite understand. It was as if his pupils were a deeper shade of black. Gazing into his eyes felt mysterious and a bit frightening, like staring into the void or across the universe. But he was kind, gentle, and soft-spoken. He never let on to the depths of his depression.
These are personal anecdotes, but they align with the data. Adult males are more likely to complete suicide. They are less likely to talk about it, to self-harm, and to make attention-seeking cries for help.
But I was also once manipulated and controlled by a different kind of adult male: the deranged, personality disordered kind. As far as I know, he’s still alive, but has used threats of suicide as one of his many tools for abusing me and god knows how many other women at this point. This kind of person has much different motives than the quiet sufferer. He seeks power and control, by any means possible.
Suicide is not an issue to take lightly. But in treating it with appropriate gravity, we must still maintain a nuanced view that accounts for the complexity and diversity of factors involved.
Up until recently, I had a fair amount of confidence that most of my colleagues in mental health had good training around these issues and followed best practices. I sensed that collectively, on the whole, we knew how to assess suicidality, along with risk factors and protective factors, and to form safety plans appropriate the patient. Though each patient is unique, we generally sensed the difference in risk factors and treatment needs between a lonely, friendless, disabled, 40-year-old divorcee in a dead-end job, 3 years into chronic depression, and an angsty, impulsive, 14-year-old video game addict 3 months into friend group drama and pubertal mood swings. We knew who was more likely to express thoughts of suicide, and who was more likely to follow through. We knew who had parents at home that could lock up sharps and pills, conduct hourly checks, engage outside supports, and call for help, and whose only protection might be in the hands of a hospital. And we understood what contributing factors would need to be unpacked in therapy.
When it comes to suicide, two of the highest risk diagnoses are Persistent Depressive Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder. Trauma and attachment issues are often at the root of both, and they can co-occur, but in general suicidality manifests much differently in these two populations. To picture classic PDD, think: Eeyore from Winnie-the-Pooh. To picture BPD, picture: Rebecca from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. The typical PDD patient suffers quietly, as my friend did. His thoughts of suicide may be daily for years without anyone knowing. When he finally attempts suicide, he may very well succeed, leaving others in shock and grief.
In contrast, the typical BPD patient suffers loudly and makes her pain known and felt by those around her. Rather than chronic low-grade depression, she is more likely to experience recurrent bouts of extreme mood swings — intolerably painful, overwhelming emotion; crisis-level loneliness and fear of abandonment — interspersed with periods of fragile normalcy and even short-lived euphoria, giddiness or joy when in the throes of a new, intense relationship, as is her style. The BPD patient has a pattern of self-destruction that is obvious to those around her. She may have scars on her limbs or other signs of self-injury, and problems with the law, health, substances, or finances due to her instability and impulsivity. She has alienated friends and loved ones and is seen as “needy,” “dramatic” or “unstable.” When she attempts suicide, she usually fails, such as by taking an overdose of pills enough to hurt but not kill her, and ends up hospitalized; this may have happened many times. She is not really certain that she doesn’t want to live anymore; in fact, she’s rarely certain of anything for more than a moment; her whole problem is that she lacks a consistent sense of who she is and what she wants, and she plays out her inner ambivalence through acting out behaviorally and projecting onto others. When the BPD patient ends up in the hospital, psych ward, or jail, no one is surprised.
The PDD patient and the BPD patient need different forms of treatment. The PDD patient may well need help learning to express his emotions, feel a broader range, unpack old traumas, and ask for help. In contrast, the BPD patient needs help learning to stabilize her emotions, create some containment around her trauma, and find healthier ways of connecting with others that do not burn them out.
As clinicians, we want our PDD patients to tell us if they have been thinking of suicide. It is often very hard for them to do so. They may have never uttered these thoughts aloud before, and may have great shame or self-doubt. While of course we don’t want anyone to feel this way, we do want to make sure our patients feel they have received an encouraging response from us when they dare to open up about these dark thoughts and painful feelings.
In contrast, some BPD patients may be like broken records when broadcasting their thoughts of suicide. It may become as customary and habitual of a greeting for them as it is for my mother to begin a conversation by offloading her stress about the traffic she just encountered on the way here. (I jest. Hi mom.) I know of a family whose young adult child with BPD shares these thoughts so often that she uses a shorthand: KMS, for “kill myself.” I fear that this is a norm in some social networks and we are breeding a generation of boys crying wolf. These patients do not need reinforcement for this ineffective way of attempting to connect with others. They certainly do not need an over-reaction. After all, the BPD patient has made it this far, and she’s still here. She said she was going to “KMS” yesterday because she had a headache, and the day before because her ice cream cone fell, and the day before because a stranger looked at her funny, but look, here she is today, getting ready for work again in spite of it all — good job! Her behavior needs to be reconditioned toward healthier coping mechanisms and less alienating language. Fixating on the suicidal impulses and attention-seeking behaviors will not solve the problem. Where else might she place her attention? And when she has painful emotions, can she learn to express them with less hyperbolic intimidation, more articulately, with greater accuracy, insight, and self-compassion, in ways that invite others in gently rather than suck them in violently or push them away?
Our field has entire treatment models dedicated to the treatment of BPD. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and Mentalizing are two appropriate and effective approaches to helping these folks stabilize their emotions, become more mindful and deliberate in their actions, redirect urges to self-harm into more constructive activities, and sustain healthy relationships. Anyone who effectively treats BPD understands the importance of boundaries when working with these patients. BPD patients can be expected to attempt to push and cross boundaries. In other relationships, this will lead to people either walking away (further reinforcing the patient’s already overwhelming fear of abandonment), or becoming doormats, walking on eggshells and coddling them co-dependently. Neither of these routes helps the BPD patient find the true love she so desperately wants.
Today, it seems as though much of that knowledge has been forgotten. Or at least it’s not being shared when appropriate with the community at large. It’s as if all talk of suicide is equally serious, and should immediately pull any concerned party into exactly the sort of codependent, overreactive, boundary-less response that is precisely the thing we ought not to do with BPD. Ultimately these responses only exaggerate their unstable false sense of self, and their sense of having more power in relationships than they know how to appropriately handle, causing more anxiety and more disordered behavior.
Deep down, most people with BPD want to heal, find love, and develop a solid sense of self. Their trauma and emotional immaturity make it difficult for them to achieve these goals. But those of us who care for them, whether as helping professionals or loved ones, can help by standing our ground. We shouldn’t get sucked in to the exhausting rollercoaster ride that is psychological enmeshment with a BPD sufferer; it does no one any good. Trust me, I’ve been there; I lost a year and a half of my life to terrifying, heart-wrenching, but ultimately empty suicide threats from a wildly emotionally dysregulated, deeply disturbed individual who fooled me into caring for him at the expense of my health, safety, financial security, reputation, mental wellbeing, and dignity. Cowering to his demands did no one any good. Don’t feed the monster.
All this is to say that with no other situation does a reasonable, grounded, informed person, what to speak of a qualified mental health professional, allow borderline-style dramatic suicide threats, pervaded with a sense of reckless urgency and tugging viciously on everyone’s heartstrings, to run the show and guide important decisions — and we do not call such things progress. When we are clear-minded, we know that allowing ourselves to be held hostage and cowering to someone’s demands under threats of violence — whether that violence is directed at us or at themselves — is not a healthy way to live. And we presume that someone who would do this to us is not in his right mind and is therefore in no position to make life-altering decisions. We respond to threats of suicide with safety planning or hospitalization, or if we suspect that we are being manipulated by false threats, we call his bluff.
The “right” to opt-in to a demographic group
Up until recently, nearly all protected classes of citizens — that is, demographic categories to which one might belong that are afforded protection from discrimination on the basis of said category — were inherited. For a list of these, we need look no further than Twitter’s own terms of service that I allegedly violated:
“You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.”
Out of those, “race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender,” (we’ll interpret that to mean sex, since they fail to mention sex and instead list “gender identity” separately), “age, disability, [and] serious disease” are all traits an individual cannot alter about herself. And that makes a strong case for why they should be protected. No one likes being discriminated against for something she did not choose and cannot control. No one likes having her character prejudged on account of her inalterable demographics.
The only exception (besides gender identity, which we’ll address momentarily) is religious affiliation. Many people are born into a family or culture of a given religion and never stray from it, and this is often but certainly not always linked with other protected categories, such as ethnicity and national origin (eg., an Indian person is likely to be Hindu; Israeli, to be Jewish; and so on). On the other hand, in America, citizens are free to change their religious beliefs, and many do exercise this freedom.
Should religious affiliation be a protected class? Yes, if we are talking about, as the Twitter rules read, protection from violence, threats, or harassment. But I would argue that everyone should be protected against violence, threats, or harassment, period, regardless of whether such crimes pertain to their demographics or not. Do the rules allow for the promotion of violence, threats, or harassment against individuals if no demographic related prejudice is mentioned?
Beyond the same freedoms and protections — human rights, one could say, pertinently — we should all enjoy, if we are talking about mere criticism and not harassment, there is also a case to be made for the notion that we should be free to criticize religious ideas and tenets online if we have moral, ethical, or rational disagreements with them. Where do the protections around religions begin and end? While I support protections against such so-called “hate speech” as “all people of such-and-such religion are stupid,” and certainly against “people of such religion must be destroyed,” I also support freedom of speech for expressing such concerns as “people of such-and-such religion condone violence against women and therefore I find their ideology morally unacceptable.”
Aside from religion, “gender identity” is the only other demographic group to which one may opt-in. And I would argue for protection of the same freedom to criticize Genderism as we should have to criticize any other religion or cult on the basis of its tenets and their ramifications. At the same time, I would also argue that all people should be protected from violence, threats, or harassment online, and that it is merely arbitrary for these protections to be limited on the basis of demographics.
Perhaps I will feel differently when “terf,” “transphobe” and “bigot” are deemed hateful slurs that I get to enjoy protection from just as broadly as others enjoy protection from, say, antisemitic slurs. Or when I can successfully file an actionable complaint about being called a “Nazi” when, for fuck’s sake, I’m not one, and that’s mean, misleading slander.
But the issue extends beyond Twitter and the hypocritical, arbitrary lines it draws in the sand. Genderists enjoy a wide range of protections and special privileges as a result of being able to opt-in to a category that the left has unilaterally, unquestioningly deemed an “oppressed minority.” The blind backlash against any criticism of this framework and its implications causes the left to even further double down on affording those special privileges, which are seen as ever increasingly necessary in order to counteract the imagined threat of persecution and its precious myth that trans people are dying in droves because of people like me. The narrative that “human rights” for trans people are somehow under attack has many far-reaching implications. And that stops us from having the freedom to question whether any of these myths are true or whether what they call “human rights” actually refers to excessive and inappropriate demands that infringe on the rights of other groups.
The “right” to promote self-harm to children
You’ve heard this argument articulated a thousand different ways, so I’ll keep it simple: if children are not developmentally or legally of the age to drink, drive, vote, have sex, smoke, or get tattoos, how can they consent to drugs and procedures that will impact them for the rest of their lives
I’m trained in developmental psychology, and can confirm: children lack the cognitive capacity to conceptualize their future long term wellbeing to the degree necessary to make such decisions. It doesn’t matter how precocious the child is, or how certain of their wishes; this is a capacity that can only develop through a natural process over the course of years of brain maturation and life experience.
Up until recently, all responsible adults in children’s lives agreed that we have a collective responsibility to keep children safe from bodily harm and protect them throughout childhood so that they enter adulthood with many options available.
Outside of the Genderist cult, we can all agree that the only people who have ever felt desire, what to speak of entitlement, to encourage children to permanently alter their bodies in ways they are too young to fathom are predators of the worst kind. Not only does no one else feel entitled to this “right;” no one else wants it.
The “right” to expose children to sexually explicit material and other age- and developmentally- inappropriate concepts
As with the last point, no safe and reasonable member of society wants this odd privilege they call a “right.”
The “right” to guilt-trip, name-call, and make gross negative overgeneralizations about others’ characters for not wanting to date or sleep with you.
Continuing along the theme of sexually predatory behavior, once again we’ve encountered what in any other circumstance we all understood to be the worst kind of creep: the person — let’s be honest, it’s usually a man, so we’ll go with that — who cannot accept “no” for an answer, and uses manipulation, intimidation, and emotional abuse tactics to make a person feel guilty or frightened for their lack of romantic interest.
A predator playing victim is a special kind of ugly. Male “lesbians” who pout and tantrum, point and scream “transphobe!” when they don’t get their way with women, deserve nothing from anyone. Frankly, they have proven themselves a danger to society. The fact that lesbian bars have been shut down and put out of business due to this misogynistic, rapey behavior should make any so-called “LGBTQ” allies shudder in horror.
Respectable people know how to behave, and that includes respecting others’ boundaries. No reasonable person believes it is their “right” to date or sleep with whoever they want. “No” is a complete sentence and the end of many stories.
While we’re at it, let’s talk about
The “right” to demand that you be seen and referred to a certain way
Once again, reasonable people understand that while it sure would be nice if we could make everyone see us in the most glowing light, that’s not a realistic hope to cling to, nor is it a fair expectation of others, or a good use of one’s energy to complain about — whether in our heads or out loud.
I recently retweeted a quote from an account called @naval; original source unknown:
“If you’re not ready to be hated, you’re not ready to be famous.”
As someone who is a little bit famous and proportionally hated, I completely agree.
None of us get to control how others view us. The sooner we accept that, the quicker we can move on to spending our energy wisely on solvable problems and achievable goals. Releasing control over how we are perceived, respecting others’ mental privacy and autonomy, paradoxically has a way of putting others at ease around us. Seeking validation, being overly sensitive to criticism, and overall being needy and self-centered in how we approach our interactions with others only makes relationships fragile, fickle and fraught. Likewise, it can only benefit our wellbeing, as well as our relationships, to develop a thicker skin and the capacity to shrug or laugh off an ill-timed joke or deliberately cruel remark.
The folly at the heart of this demand has inspired many gender critical satirists to employ such phrases as “my adjectives are handsome and wise.” It’s pretty clear what they’re getting at.
Only petty, vain, insecure, self-absorbed, un-self-aware, controlling, insensitive people think that they have a “right” to control how others view them. The rest of us take on the responsibility to develop ourselves into respectable, interesting people who will naturally attract the kinds of people we want to socialize with. And if that strategy doesn’t work with some people, we accept it and move on.
Likewise,
The “right” to demand you be accepted wherever you want to be
Normal people do feel hurt when we experience rejection. We want to be included amongst certain groups or invited to certain events, and when we’re not, we may feel disappointed, sad, embarrassed, regretful, or ashamed. Maybe we even experience a little bit of anger or resentment if we think we have been rejected unfairly.
But only a little bit. Too much anger here is cause for concern. Generally, we do well to move on and look for where our presence is desired. Most normal people want to be with people who want to be with them. For those who don’t, who repeatedly seek out and recreate experiences of rejection, psychotherapy can help unpack and heal the reasons for this behavior and help the patient develop healthier instincts to gravitate toward places that truly welcome them.
You’ve got to wonder about the character, motives, and logic of someone who wants to belong where they’re not welcome so desperately that they are willing to induce the metaphorical FOG of Fear, Obligation, and Guilt to compel others to accommodate them by force, at the expense of relationships that are natural, comfortable, easeful.
Normal people do not feel entitled to the “right” to be liked, wanted, and welcome wherever we desire.
The “right” to blame “oppression” for why people don’t like you
Have you ever considered that maybe the reason some people don’t like you is… your personality?
If you’re like most people, you have. You might have some genuine character flaws to work out, or you might just not be everyone’s cup of tea. Chances are, both are true to some extent. Welcome to being a human.
Maybe you need to work on self-esteem and self-acceptance. Maybe you could stand to become more assertive, or more polite; develop your sense of humor, or learn how to be serious when the situation calls for it; take a greater interest in others; pay better attention to body language and learn to read social cues; strengthen your intellect; cultivate interests and hobbies; smile more; take better care of your personal hygiene and groom yourself more appropriately for the situation; be more punctual, or less rigid; a better team player, or more independent; more emotionally open, or more stable… the list goes on.
There are many factors that go into why we like some people more than others. Some are simply matters of interpersonal chemistry. Some, such as facial symmetry, cannot be changed, while many, such as the list above, certainly can. But ideologues like to disregard all of that in favor of one convenient, all-encompassing explanation, at the expense of personal responsibility for character development: “oppression.” The rest of us are supposed to just go along with it, coddle and feel sorry for them, further indulging the narrative that everything is someone else’s fault.
Normal people don’t feel entitled to such an easy way out of the challenging but necessary process of Becoming A Person. We certainly wouldn’t call it a “right.”
The “right” to impose your religious views onto secular institutions
Remember that lovely thing called the separation of church and state? Those were the good old days. But now, every institution has been captured by an unscientific, illiberal ideology that has yet to out itself as the cultish religion many of us do see it to be.
I’m a big fan of freedom of religion. It’s right up there with freedom of speech — inextricably linked, in my opinion. Both are precious tenets of liberal democracy. As far as I’m concerned, if a group of people wants to believe in this bizarre, novel, unscientific concept called a “gender identity,” and they even want to adopt new identities and names when they are with each other, that’s not much different than the Hare Krishnas worshipping the tulsi plant as a goddess and adopting initiate names from their gurus that they use while in temples and ceremonies. To each their own.
But if they start recruiting children in public schools? We’re going to have a problem.
Harming children? Double-problem.
Getting people fired from their jobs for not chanting the mantras? Triple-problem.
Controlling how I speak? Oh, hell no.
Which brings us to…
The “right” to insist that language should change, not in the way it typically evolves, through colloquial shifts over time, but by using intimidation tactics to enforce immediate adherence to counter-intuitive, radical, sweeping, compelled changes in speech.
Hey, it’s fun to make up words sometimes, and invent new uses for familiar ones. Every generation has its own colloquialisms. Some mature and withstand tests of time, ultimately assembling into the collective lexicon, while others fade into obscurity.
You know what’s not fun? Being told to say something with a gun pointed at your head.
That’s practically what it feels like to many people nowadays. Their careers, reputations, financial stability, and access to platforms are all on the line. If these are at stake, it follows that their health and the wellbeing of their families are, too.
Genderists like to invent Orwellian slogans, make up words, and redefine existing words until they have lost all practical value or come to mean their opposites. And then they like to pressure, intimidate, guilt trip, and otherwise coerce the rest of us into adopting their language and forsaking our own.
Normal people don’t view ourselves as having a “right” to — I’ll say it — oppress other people this way.
Are we starting to see who the real “oppressors” are yet?
The “right” to choose who you compete with
Sporting competitions have always been regulated and refereed by third parties tasked with ensuring fairness for all parties based on measurably objective categories such as age, height, weight, level, and of course, sex. Only when it comes to “gender identity” and its all-out effort to trump sex-based protections can a person simply decide to be placed in competition with opponents of lesser physical strength.
Again, no one else feels entitled to such a “right” — or if they do, they are promptly laughed off, not indulged.
The “right” to commit a crime and then choose who you are incarcerated with
I’ve been arrested and briefly held in jail three times.
To be clear, I have no criminal convictions, and my record is clean.
But you know that monster who trapped me in an abusive relationship for a year and a half? Once, when he had me trapped in my apartment (by physically blocking the exit with his superior strength) and was throwing my things everywhere, I managed to wrestle my phone back from him (he would steal it as a way of controlling me) long enough to call 911 for help. When the police arrived, they pulled each of us aside to hear our stories. I was frightened, shaking, unable to think clearly, desperate for help. The abuser, on the other hand, in classic abuser style, was cool as a cucumber. The next thing I knew, I was in the back of a police car.
The bastard was that good. I didn’t hear what he said to the cops, but he must have pulled the whole mild-mannered, meek, rational guy dealing with a crazy girlfriend card. He probably claimed it was his apartment that I was trying to kick him out of. It wasn’t. It was mine. And I just wanted him out, because he was throwing a terrifying tantrum. What was I arrested for, wrestling him in an attempt to get my phone out of his hands? To get out of the door, needing to escape my own home in the middle of the night, willing to momentarily forfeit it to a monster?
Fast forward several years. I’m in a much better place, happily living with a doting gentle giant who could hardly harm a fly, and I will never see that POS again. I had the charges dismissed and wiped from my record. But I’ve been in jail, awaiting bail, for a few hours, a few times.
I was also arrested twice as a minor, both times at political protests. I was a far left radical long before that became the trend it is now. Both times, I was mass-arrested amongst a large group of demonstrators. Both times, I had done nothing illegal, but other members of the group may have engaged in property destruction that got us all in trouble. Both times, the charges were dismissed, and once, I even won a class action lawsuit against the police department for wrongful arrest. But all in all, I’ve been in holding briefly a total of three occasions in my life.
I’ve also visited a prison. The former owner of the bohemian teahouse I worked at while attending graduate school in San Francisco was arrested, prosecuted, and ultimately incarcerated for possession and distribution of LSD and MDMA. When he was transferred to a lower security prison in Oregon with a drug program that successful completion of would result in a shorter sentence, I visited him a couple of times. This was a relatively cushy facility in that they allowed him to teach meditation and poetry classes to his fellow inmates in lieu of doing physical labor. But he desperately looked forward to occasional visits, and begged his visitors to bring quarters so they could buy him his one luxury: the yogurt and granola parfait sold in the visiting room vending machines. By the time I visited him, he’d been wearing gray scrubs and the same old pair of glasses for 7 years.
Of course, you hardly need me to tell you any of this. You’ve seen television depictions of prison. Perhaps you’ve even been there yourself.
But let me tell you a thing or two about the process that ensues the moment of arrest.
This might seem obvious, but for the record, they don’t make it easy to be a criminal, or to be momentarily mistaken for one. After the initial shock of the arrest itself, your punishment begins with the torture of tedium. Everything is unpleasant and painfully slow. The environment is stark and hostile: cold air, hard surfaces, flickering fluorescent lights. The dignifying graces and small kindnesses we take for granted in daily interactions — politeness, eye contact, smiles, manners, tone — all go out the window the moment you encounter trouble with the law. You are treated as less than human. It is a trial of the will and spirit.
Things that could be fixed are left broken. Problems that could easily be remedied with $5 worth of decades-old technology are left unaddressed. You’re allowed that payphone-like call, but deprived of any assistance, technological or human, accessing anyone’s phone number, in an era when no one has anyone’s phone number memorized anymore, despite the fact that your phone is in a plastic bag in a bin on a shelf on the other side of the counter. If I could have just been allowed to view my contacts, I could have gotten bailed out by a friend who could help me leave my abuser. Instead, my only option with the combination of numbers available to me was to get help through a friend of my abuser and wind up back in his hands, now with yet one more dangerous form of power he held over me: my newfound status as his abuser in the eyes of the law. This situation, which dragged out for months, entrenched me into a pattern of fawning and caretaking behaviors that led to Stockholm Syndrome. It was no longer an option to try to escape the relationship; if I upset him, he could press charges. I had to essentially placate his every whim until he used the power in his hands to let me off the hook. By then, my brain was scrambled, and my life was shaped around supporting his dependency on me. I had lost countless hours of sleep on the nights he kept me awake with his fits of rage. I had no time or space to think for myself. He sabotaged my friendships and left me on edge about the possibility that if I displeased him he could destroy my employment situation as well, even though this would have undermined him as well, since he depended on me. The deliberate inefficiency and brokenness of our legal system kept me trapped longer in an abusive relationship not only despite, but because of, the fact that I called 911 for help.
I know a thing or two about being a victim labeled a perpetrator. Perhaps this informs my skepticism of the Drama Triangle as portrayed in our culture currently.
In the jail’s waiting room that night, my nervous system still in shock, the hours passed very slowly. There were certain things that had to happen to move the process along of getting bailed out by my abuser’s friend. At times, staff sat around doing apparently nothing while dryly refusing to answer my questions about the process or help me in any way despite the supposed legal protection of being “innocent until proven guilty” in this country.
Trust me. They deliberately make things slow and inefficient. The entire process is designed to make you feel small, guilty, and powerless, show you who’s in charge, break your spirit, accustom you to indignity, rob you of pleasure and autonomy.
Incarceration has never been about catering to anyone’s desires or respecting their dignity. The incarcerated have access to only the most basic of rights, the most minimal protections and provisions: shelter from the elements, basic hygiene, enough food not to die, maybe some medication. When you are incarcerated, you literally become a number. You are stripped of your identity: your family, job, hobbies, personal style. All you are given is a pair of scrubs. Otherwise you are lumped together with all other adults of your sex. So the next guy’s a murderer? A con artist? An addict? A different religion, race, class, sexuality? Completely unlike you in every way? Too bad. You’re all treated the same now, which is to say, like dirt. If you would like to keep some sense of dignity, that is now an entirely internal process, because it won’t be granted by any external treatment. Welcome to the crucible.
If you want the luxury of a sense of identity that is validated by the world around you, a prison is absolutely the last place you should go.
No one expects prison to be a place of luxury, peace, compassion, pleasure, identity, individuality, sensitivity to feelings, accommodation, or even respect. We all know it is, by definition, a place of suffering and indignity. That’s the whole point.
Furthermore, while on paper an accused is “innocent until proven guilty,” they don’t make you feel that way. Everyone responsible for containing an innocent suspect, from the moment of arrest to acquittal, treats him as if he’s a lying POS. You’ve been arrested; you are not to be trusted.
The expectation to commit a crime and then get to demand that you be jailed alongside people who reflect back to you your inner sense of who you are so as to feed your ego and enable your lies? The expectation to be seen with any degree of trust in the sincerity of your motives for making a claim about yourself when you have committed a crime? You guessed it: that’s not a right anyone expects except an entitled special interest group with ulterior motives.
When you chop off a Hydra’s head, it grows two more.
Genderists succeeded in mass-reporting my viral tweet, leading to a brief account suspension. I appealed it, and that appeal is still awaiting review, but after reflecting and talking over the situation with a few people, I’m on the verge of conceding to the minor indignity of deleting the tweet, begrudgingly (and falsely) indicating I somehow agree with the lie that my words were “hate speech” in exchange for having my account back.
So what have they won, then? One less “transphobic” (read: logical) tweet in the world, and several days of @sometherapist being inactive (though @some_therapist said a few things and gained a few followers). But what has that minor victory caused them?
@sometherapist’s time out, combined with the necessity of redressing the situation somehow, has compelled me to write this article, thoroughly elaborating on the concepts in the original offending tweet, strengthening those arguments, and offering them to the audience that follows my blog, all within the safety of a website I manage myself that cannot be silenced. Now I can delete the offending tweet, reactivate my account, and bring this article to Twitter.
