Originally a comment by Arty Morty on True Selves.
His “true self” being the woman he is not. His fake true self, his pretend true self, his fantasy true self. Back in the before times a true self meant something along the lines of a self not repressed and stifled by convention. It didn’t mean childish fantasy. Adults didn’t prance around saying their true selves were birds or race cars or space travelers or Nobel laureates or ponies. Fantasy and delusion are now what’s real, so I guess truth and sanity are fake.
How are we supposed to even try to show compassion for people who may or may not have debilitating dysphoria when so many of the most vocal claimants spout endless “true self” cultspeak bullshit? The conditions we’re being asked to accept aren’t just slowly creeping up, they’re exploding in our faces like a joke can of nuts filled with spring-loaded snakes.
Part of the problem with gender dysphoria — or any identity disorder, I guess — is that it’s a disorder relating to one’s relationship with their social environment, as in everyone else, as in their relationship with us — a kind of social contract that we were at one time merely asked to sign up to. At first this new social contract that the trans rights movement was establishing, with the help of the fields of psychiatry/psychology, seemed like a much more modest ask. Something like, if someone has this debilitating disorder, they’re doing the best they can to manage it, and that might entail some unconventional appearance and behaviour… and that point is where you and I and the rest of society come in: a humble request that people be understanding and compassionate and offer some leeway towards their unconventionality because of this rare condition which creates a difficult situation.
And that fits fairly well generally with liberalism: not unlike feminism, it involves chafing against social norms. Not unlike homosexuality, it involves an atypical set of behavioural preferences that others might not understand but they’re merely being asked to tolerate and to open up space for a modest footprint in the social space to go about their business in; and not unlike mental and physical disabilities, we’re being asked to apply some of our collective capital towards better accommodating those whose needs are greater than ours. It’s not unlike economic egalitarianism, too.
Not that that ideal of a functional kind of transgender rights ever worked so well in practice. It was always unstable. Because of the disorder part of the equation, and because many of the people who purported to have gender dysphoria were not being honest at all about their innermost motives. (Not honest to themselves or to others.)
The transgender social contract is no longer voluntary — we’re not being politely asked to play along but forcefully commanded, and on top of that, it’s been rewritten so that it puts 100% of the onus on us, the rest of society, and requires no work at all on the part of the patients themselves — in fact they’re not even supposed to be understood as patients anymore! Anyone can declare a transgender identity. Once you do, you’re free to make up whatever fantasy story you like about yourself, and everyone else is obligated to bend over backwards to make your fantasy seem as real as possible to you. You are automatically the boss of everyone. (Come to think of it, I’m rather surprised more men with trans identities don’t sign up to be referees. All that power to order everyone around, and you even get a whistle! Seems a natural fit.) It’s that Twilight Zone episode where the bratty kid obtains omnipotent powers and terrorizes the townsfolk, only we’re giving that power to every single fucked up, narcissistic man (and more than a few women). What were we thinking?
The field of psychiatry and psychology bears some of the blame for this: they set the ball rolling on the idea that if we ask everyone else (women especially) to carve out more and more exceptions for these patients, they’ll be better off. They didn’t see that the cost to everyone else in society was rapidly climbing, and that the sense of entitlement they engendered among many unstable people would prove too alluring to resist.
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16 responses to “Guest post: You even get a whistle”
Powerful little Opie Cunningham!
Hahaha you spooked me for a minute when you called him Opie — I had to google if it was Ron Howard in that Twilight Zone episode. (I never liked Opie or the Andy Griffith show. Creeped me out for some reason. My black and white tv knowledge is mostly limited to the Twilight Zone, Lucy & Desi, and Dobie Gillis/Maynard G Krebs.)
It’s Billy Mumy, best known for this episode of TZ & as the kid in the old Lost in Space (Danger, Will Robinson!) series. A nice bit of obscure (at least, prior to Wikipedia) trivia is that he was in the duo responsible for the novelty song “Fish Heads”. Do I feel old upon learning that he’s 70? Yes, I do.
OH MY GOD fish heads! Wasn’t BIll Paxton involved in that? (Aww Bill Paxton. I have heard many times that he was an absolutely wonderful man. So many people devastated that we lost him so soon.)
WILD that it’s the Twilight Zone kid. (AND that he’s the Lost in Space kid. Lots of crazy pop culture trivia today! There’s possibly a future Jeopardy round I will ace because of this thread.)
I never liked the Andy Griffith show either. Too corny – especially Andy Griffith himself.
I’ve been watching the original TZ episodes. They are full of actors who weren’t famous yet. I saw one with William Shatner pre-Star Trek.
The William Shatner one is one of the few things that genuinely terrified me (rather than most modern horror which just upsets or sickens me, which is not remotely the same thing). It’s dated now, but it still lands a bullseye right on a primal fear… about there being something that’s alive and looking right at you from a place where nothing alive is supposed to be. In the episode it’s a goblin outside a plane window, but it might as well be the boogeyman under the bed or the monster in the closet — or, if you’re a David Lynch person, “killer” BOB crawling out from behind the couch to terrorize the people of Twin Peaks.
Bill Mumy was also on Babylon 5, and in one scene where his character was supposed to be chanting in an alien language, he used some nonsense lyrics from one of his songs. The producer didn’t find out until after the episode aired….
And with a Babylon 5 reference in the mix that makes a Gen X pop culture bingo!
Fish heads, though. It really was huge to me at the time. I loved it so. Today that kind of disposable DIY absurdist charm is just called TikTok or YouTube or whatever — we still see ourselves in the underdog goofy/silly aesthetic, but we have a hundred million outlets per second offering it now. Social media is incredibly popular! But back then that kind of independent spirit was hard to come by in the media, and we had to cherish the little moments when the goofy silly goofballs got their silly goofy stuff on the airwaves. It’s the same reason I still love Weird Al Yankovic and his terrible/masterpiece film UHF. It felt at the time like it didn’t matter that it was BAD, it mattered that it was… I don’t quite now the right word. AUTHENTIC seems tainted, but if it weren’t, it would probably be the most apt.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cn73Wtem0No
Will Robinson was an obnoxious brat. His mother, the sweet, sweet June Lockhart, says at one point, “Will would never disobey me.” Ma’am, your son is always disobeying you – he’s a sneaky, deceptive horror.
The artists behind “Fish Heads” went by the name “Barnes and Barnes”
Shatner was in at least two Twilight Zone episodes. In one, his character was waiting for his car to be repaired. There was one of those fortune teller things in a diner. Put in a coin, get a fortune.
Professor Google tells us the airplane window one was titled Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, and the fortune teller one was Nick of Time – The Future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vqc8b9nKgoo
Joe Staczynski (the creator & producer & wrote many of the episodes) had a no improvising rule for Babylon 5.
Of course everyone pointing out it’s Mumy is correct – gun jumped…
Heh so you thought I stuck Ron Howard in for no reason? That’s funny. (I didn’t get the “Opie Cunningham” reference.)
June Lockhart was in an episode of Babylon 5. “The Quality of Mercy” was the title, according to the Lurker’s Guide to Babylon 5. I don’t recall if her and Bill’s characters had any scenes together.