No #BeKind for you
Janice Turner on magic gender and snobbery:
Of all such cases — and I’ve followed many — none encapsulates the shibboleths, snobberies and magical thinking of our age so well. Day after day we heard doctors and managers of Victoria Hospital, Kirkcaldy, relate how they unashamedly closed ranks against a working-class nurse, whose rights, feelings or even basic humanity fell beyond their #BeKind purview.
It’s true you know. “Be kind” is never ever about listening to women who want to preserve the rights we’ve worked so hard to declare and defend; “be kind” is only for men who claim to be women and the few women who cheer on their claim. The rule for non-compliant women is sit down and shut up.
Each day we learnt new ways in which senior hospital staff had persecuted a nurse with a flawless record. Jamie Doyle, head of nursing, wanted Peggie reported to the police. Upton claimed to have noted earlier incidents in which Peggie’s hostility towards him had endangered patients. But no one corroborated these grave claims and an IT expert who analysed Upton’s phone testified that these were not contemporaneous notes but added after the Christmas Eve row. (Peggie was cleared of these and other allegations in a separate hospital disciplinary inquiry.)
Why did all of these senior people fall over themselves to take Upton’s side, even at the expense of truth? Because trans identity tops an all-important oppression hierarchy and the purest form of virtue is being a “trans ally”.
And why does trans identity top an all-important oppression hierarchy?
I don’t know. I’ve never understood it. I doubt I ever will.
I suppose part of the explanation is wanting the current thing to be the best ever, so that we here now are involved in the best thing ever, as opposed to being involved in a stupid destructive mistake. But that’s such a silly pathetic reason for this massive clusterfuck, so it’s not an explanation that really explains much.
Four months after the Supreme Court clarified the meaning of sex, it is an outrage that public money is still being squandered while women fight for basic rights. Why does the Health and Safety Executive not remind employers of 1992 workplace laws which mandate single-sex changing? Why are NHS England and the NHS Confederation allowed by the health secretary, Wes Streeting, to drag their feet? The ludicrous joke that sex is an unfathomable mystery has worn very thin.
And it was never funny.
The only thing I can think of it that it’s a way for people to express solidarity with rich white men, who still have the preponderance of power in society, without being too obvious about it.
I think it’s the purest form of virtue because it’s the costliest dogma to uphold. That’s always been the way with religion: the more preposterous and ostentatious the display of commitment — i.e., the harder it is to merely casually dabble, which is to say, the more expensive the dues are in that particular membership “tier” — the more virtuous one is seen to be, at least among fellow aspirants to that particular religion. That’s why the most committed members of any religion demonstrate it by wearing conspicuous articles of clothing — yarmulkes, turbans — and/or by the male members forcing the women under their control to be covered by garments whenever they’re in public — enshrouding them in burqas of varying degrees of severity.
And the more loudly one demonstrates their belief in the dogma — especially the most “difficult” parts, i.e., the hardest parts to swallow — the more virtuous one is presumed to be. This is the principle that drives Muslim suicide bombers, for example.
To my mind, this is all best understood through the lens of behavioural science — to be specific, something like, evolutionary behavioural neuropsychology, if that’s even what they call it? I.e., human culture is irrational and crazy because the human brain is just a primitive monkey with an overactive prefrontal cortex, which has deluded itself into thinking it’s a lot smarter than it actually is.
People covet exclusivity. Hell if I know exactly why, but it’s evidently a built-in drive that lives somewhere deep down in the brain where the animal instincts allegedly are, near the cerebellum. It’s apparently related to tribal in-group insecurity. This phenomenon isn’t limited to religion; the entire fashion industry runs on it, for one other notable example.
It’s trans ideology’s naked preposterousness that has made it irresistible to that primitive part of the brain that controls tribal in-group signalling, and which subsequently set off a frenzy among insecure left-wing people to see who can smother themselves in it the most. I don’t think that the autogynephiles who made up the religion planned it that way; it was just dumb luck that their silly belief system happened to fit the bill. Call it “keeping up with the Transes.”
As this religion falls apart, we’ll see the majority of people quietly slink away from it — like a fashion fad that’s come and gone. But I think we’ll also see a small few, the ones who’ve mentally cornered themselves into fighting to the bitter end, become extremely violent, more along the lines of Islamist terrorists.
I think you’re half right there, Arty. The commitment to the cause has to be expensive, or ay least be seen to be expensive, but ideally it should be able to be finessed in such a way that it’s only genuinely expensive to the right (i.e. the wrong) people. People like us who actually care a whit that what we say conforms a little to reality. OK, the cost for the suicide bomber is a bit high but they’re the unlucky dupes. For the performative, managerial class, for the clerics, for the luvvies and influencers who live to be seen, it’s the best of all possible worlds. Power, wealth and fame fall to them for the cost of what? A few words, some garish decorations, the right flags on their social media posts. These things are fun, a great game, not a cost.
Turner is right. It’s the people at the bottom (and those with a conscience) who get shafted.
There’s also an important game theory angle to it. We all tend to trust people more if it’s clearly not in their interest to betray us, hence an effective way to gain the trust of others (and the cooperation that this trust enables) is to deliberately put ourselves in a situation in which betrayal really does go against our interests*. In this sense repeating back an obvious lie is roughly analogous to Cortez’s men burning their ships on the shores of Mexico to rule out any possibility of retreat, thus leaving themselves with only two options: conquer or die. If you repeat back a plausible lie, you may still be able to evade responsibility by claiming you were deceived once the wind turns. If you repeat an obvious lie (“The election was stolen!”, “Eddie Izzard is a woman!”, etc.) you have deprived yourself of any such excuse, and now your lies may come back to bite in the you-know-what if the other side should ever come to power. The potential costliness of the lie is precisely what makes it such a valuable test of loyalty. It once again reminds me of something Jung Chang wrote about Mao’s China: Terror was seen as desirable not just for its effect on the victims (or those afraid of ending up as such), but just as much for its effect on the perpetrators. People were supposed to deduce for themselves: “If the chairman goes down, his enemies are going to come after me as one of his accomplices, therefore I have a stake in keeping the chairman in power forever”. Another advantage of making people actively complicit in the crimes of the regime was to encourage them to rationalize their behavior and get a justification spiral going: “Only a despicable spineless coward would persecute innocent people on behalf of a psychopathic tyrant and a monster. But I’m not a despicable spineless coward, and I did persecute those those people, therefore it had to be the right thing to do”.
Once again, I can’t resist quoting what Gurwinder Bhogal wrote about Fashionably Irrational Beliefs (FIBs):
That last point can’t be emphasized enough. When Cortez ordered his men to burn their ships, not only were they supposed to know that the only option left to them was to fight to the death, but the natives were supposed to know it as well: “We are so determined to win that we’re prepared to deliberately put ourselves in a situation where our only options are victory or death. Hence, if anyone in this battle is going to retreat it will have to be you. Are you really sure you’re that motivated?”. Likewise the real message being conveyed by the faithful repetition of FIBs is: “Having the truth on your side is no good against me. I’m going to say whatever my tribe asks me to say, act as if it were true, and let others pay the price whatever it may be, and neither facts, nor logic, nor the risk of reputational damage, public humiliation, ridicule, or even criminal liability is going to stop me!”
* I believe it was Steven Pinker who once wrote something about the “right to be sued”. Why would anyone consider being sued a “right” worth having? Because it creates a stake in sticking to our deals (if I don’t meet my obligations, you can sue me), thus enabling others to trust us enough to engage in cooperative behaviors that really are in our interest.
Plus. of course, the linking with LGB, which gave it instant credibility on the left. No one wanted to be ‘that’ person who was the one to deny rights to a marginalized group. The LGB did all the work, so while it seems costly, a lot of the cost didn’t accrue to the trans; it accrued to someone else. That makes it even more attractive. They got to be a member of a marginalized group without ever having to actually deal with being marginalized. Just like they get to be women without having to be treated like they are women. No making sandwiches, no making babies, just all the glitter and glamour (which most women have little of in their lives, and some of us don’t want).
On a related note, I was reading an obit for Justice Souter yesterday, and more than one person commented on his unwavering support for LGBTQ+ issues. No, he supported LGB issues; the rest were added later.
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