After what started out as a quite jovial conversation this week I have decide that I am no longer a Caucasian man of average build, of European decent, and around the 6ft tall mark, I am instead a 7ft man named Leeroy, I am of African decent and I’m hung like a horse (you don’t know if that bit is a lie). Now this may strike you as a bit of a strange thing to decide to be, but I am going to explain why I have given myself the right to be what I might decide I can think of myself as, the right to have your criticisms silenced lest they interfere with my rights, the right to demand that you change the way you understand me, and why you have no right, in modernity especially, to argue with my summation of my self. I’m going to attempt to keep a certain amount of joviality in this piece, though that might prove difficult. Bear in mind that if you are struggling with this subject yourself YOU SHOULD NOT READ ANY FURTHER as I have no wish to cause psychological harm to anyone, I merely wish to discuss this subject calmly and somewhat academically, if you cannot do that…

TURN BACK NOW!

In my vicinity there is a man who wishes to ‘become’ , be described as, and more importantly be thought of as a woman. Actually there is more than one that I am aware of, and it is proving hard not to be fully aware of them all the time since their camouflage is so dreadful! To this end he/she/it/whatever must live as a woman (I prefer to say emulating/mimicking/acting the woman) for a certain period of time so as to qualify for a series of gender reassignment surgeries that will be paid for by the taxpayer. A taxpayer who incidentally has not been consulted as to whether they wish to funnel their earnings into cosmetic surgery rather than necessary medical procedures, and all this in a time where surgeries are being put off or cancelled at an alarming rate. Now at this point I would like to point out that I have no particular issue with this man’s wish to be different or to live in whatever fashion he pleases, that is not what I find ridiculous about this whole affair, I will explain further the distinction I am making as I go on. Suffice to say for now that I have no prejudices when it comes to how folks conduct themselves, apart from what I consider the obvious aspect of does it do anyone else any harm?, if the answer to that question is NO then “have at um” I would say! Though I would add that whatever you try to create in the mind of others as a picture of who you are, by the way you dress and act, there must be a recognition within you of the rights of others to be inharmonious with that effort, lest you infringe their right to use their own judgement and experiential data. I remember watching Eurotrash in the 90s, and though I was often confused as to the why of peoples behaviour I was never attracted to any idea of curbing it had I possessed the power to, which of course I didn’t.

There is a sociological theory that grows from a philosophical argument that we must surely consider so as not to make a judgement too quickly on this matter, and it would be remiss of me not to mention it even if I will dismiss it. The question is one of the nature of humans as essence rather than existence, are we born as a natural something? Or are we developed or socialised to become a something? The sociological theory is that men are taught by society to be man-like, becoming that which is expected of them, with all the traits of a man, including competitiveness, physical labour, protective impetus etc.. and in turn women are taught to be empathetic, visual, expressive and nurturing etc… If it is indeed the case that we have no essential nature/role and society/family/peer groups teach us what we must become, then I may be wrong in this essay, and I’m willing to be so if a better argument convinces me.

Richard Dawkins wrote of Memes, markers that act like genetic information but are not necessarily physical, they instead become part of our makeup as repeating characteristics by incorporating into our lives from the accumulated traits or learning of others within our family timeline. I am not well read on Dawkins postulate, nor do I offer it in this piece as a placation, though it might explain many things better than I can. Important also is to recognise that some ancient societies historically did not use the terms of Masculine and Feminine as indicators of physical sexual organ possession, in the Hellenistic period these terms indicated the roles of the sexual partners, the penetrated person assuming the feminine description and the penetrating person being the masculine, this is regardless of whether this was two men, two women, a man and a woman, or a group copulating effort.

Somebody recently asked me if I’d ever considered myself as bisexual or homosexual (normal teenage thoughts I’d suspect, when one grapples with such an introspection), and my answer was, as always, given honestly “I’ have not been previously attracted in any sexual sense to any man, but I am definitely attracted to femininity and the female shape, I suppose that if that was achieved by a man to enough of an extent that they sparked the desire I have historically only experienced solely with females then I would further suppose I would then have to more than entertain the idea that I could be actually sexually attracted to them”. So no, I have never been involved in a homosexual act, and certainly attraction does not itself enable such a thing on its own so I likely never will be, but I am forced by a necessary admission to not rule it out even though it seems very unlikely that even if I was attracted I would do anything about it since I am animalistically driven by my desire for a certain type of female sexiness. Homosexual sex does not in any way disgust me either, I find it laughingly stupid that a man (and it is usually a man who is so disgusted) might be mortified by seeing or imagining the acts involved, since these are the very same, or similar, acts that they themselves might expect from their female partner, fellatio, hand-play, anal penetration etc, what sort of sense does that make? And to be disgusted by the thought of performing fellatio or being anally penetrated seems just as unreasonable for the same reason. What I have described are sexual acts and roles, gender is not a sexual tag we can use here, a persons gender is not an indicator of their sexual preferences, acts or inner desires, this is why I am of the opinion (and remember this essay is entirely opinion, don’t rush the podium!), that LGB should be one group of individuals and Trans should be another separate group altogether.

In light of recent media and government capitulation, without discussion, examination, or the establishment of any truth of the matter, and motivated by a skewed idea of PC and the avoidance of unfair differentiation no doubt, the pressure to conform to this new norm feels akin to the pressure more normally reserved for the narratives concerning charity, religion, the Holocaust, centre-ground politics, Apartheid, Israeli legitimacy etc. I find these subjects to have Hegelian limitations, in that power shuts down the revising and arguing data/information/opinion, no matter how strong or persuasive it could ultimately prove. Take the fact that the labour opposition in 2018 had, without any consultation with its membership, appointed a transgendered individual as their LGBT spokesperson, why does this individual speak for homosexuals and bisexuals? I know homosexuals who do not understand nor support transgendered individuals because it is not any more a logical union from their perspective than it is to me. These Trans folks are not a claiming to be a psycho-sexual group, their attempt is to be a recognised as a physiological group.

As humans we have a tendency to group things together so as to simplify their descriptions, the term sport is an example of this, as if darts has even the remotest resemblance to rugby? This is not the same thing though, it has an importance to people’s lives within this definition because it has the power to make what people think suddenly be defined as incorrect without any explanation, just simply now wrong. I feel that the important fight for a sexually equal society that has been continuously, and repeatedly, fought by certain groups is in danger of being swallowed up by a different group motivated by a different argument. The Trans community has piggybacked the successes, the arguments and the rights of the sexually expressive Gay community; they have joined a team that is already, and rightly so, winning, but in truth they aren’t playing the same game. Recently the lesbian community has taken issue with the Trans woman community, citing that these newly ordained women do not and should not represent them since they are not real women and so are not fighting the same fight. I think they are highlighting my point very well, and I would argue they’re right to do so.

We might mention that gender, from a sociological perspective, is not a rigid definition in countries and societies that are not naturally productive or fully given over to science, it’s importance is diminished if it has no purpose, but what I am arguing here is that in a society that embraces science, to be productive and to progress, the importance of gender definition is increased in the same way that the codification of anything and everything is increased. You simply cannot do science without universal measures that all can agree on, this is not a prejudice merely an observation. Imagine a technologically based society that had problems defining measurable qualities such as length, weight, speed etc because these quantities were thought arguable… take a minute…

What is required of me, and I do mean required, mandated even, is that I accept that this man is a woman because that is how he believes himself to actually be. I have two problems with this, the first is that physically we know this person to be a man as that is how he has been configured by his genetics (or by the will of his deity if you like that sort of thing, I don’t), a comedian I heard recently said “she may think she’s a woman, but sooner or later her doctor will remind her she needs a prostate exam”. Being a male is a measurable quantity full of scientifically distinguishable qualities, he is man like, he has man parts, every fibre of his (medical) being screams MAN loudly, he is a man under a microscope and male in any test run upon him, he looks like a man, he walks like a man, he sounds like a man, if he died and was dug up in a thousand years the palaeontologist would label his bones a man. In his efforts to be a woman he is merely a very bad actor hoping to some day become a better one, his performance is not woman-like, it is actually really more female child like, he skips and tosses his hair and pulls unconvincing girly poses and faces, he is playing the role badly in that the acts and actions seem faked, repetitions of observations made late in life rather than affect, unlike they would be or usually are with an actual woman. An actual woman has not to feign the weaknesses or frailties of their body (when compared with a similarly sized man), actual women (generally) have different abilities, such as being able to multi-task I’m told (though that may be a myth), they tend to have a higher degree of empathy and nurturing impetus, emotionally they are stronger than men and they are less likely to suffer from addiction or to commit suicide, they make less mistakes when regularly performing a task, they are less lazy than men and less likely to try to solve a problem using violence, they tend to suffer more from anxiety, there are many good arguments why women should lead countries and have positions of power in industry as there are plenty of examples where this has been beneficial etc. I wonder does this, now female, individual struggle to throw a ball, spit, or open jar lids, whence before they were easy tasks? (that’s a cheap shot I know, but it amuses me). Real women are often slaves to their emotions and their hormones, as are men of course in many cases but in a completely different way. Men turn to anger and frustration where women feel helpless and internalise their blame. Would this now new woman move in a woman-like direction in the face of a problem, I doubt it…

The second problem I have is one of mental capacity or correctness, I wonder if this individual was to believe himself a tree, or a hamster, or a unicorn, or to believe in fairies at the bottom of the garden, or that they were the reincarnated embodiment of Queen Victoria, would we accommodate his needs in the same way? Asylums have been filled with people who believed themselves to be other than that which they are… If he was born in the wrong body then how does he know he was born in the wrong body? He has been in that body for all of the experiences he has ever had good or bad. How does he know what it is like to be anything other than that which he is? I don’t know that, and neither do you, of course we don’t!.. Is it wrong to describe this man as a person in the midst of a possibly serious mental illness, and should he be treated no differently or considered no less a danger to himself than an anorexic, a self-harmer or a heroin addict? It is true that attempting to change ones body to be more in line with what one would like to be is a very common occurrence, that’s what physical self improvement is all about, I understand that it yields confidence and happiness; bodybuilders are doing that and so are athletes, or persons who get piercings or tattoos, but their goal is mostly the attempt of an enhancement that most persons would agree is not a danger to the physical specimen they are. I am open to being wrong about the “most people” statement, a majority is no indicator of correctness.

If she/he/it believes or wishes himself/herself/itself to be anything other than what he/etc/etc is then he/(given up now) is free to do so, the problem is that he strongly wishes for me to believe it also, what right does he have to demand that of me, and where did that right come from? Here we have hit upon my major gripe, my issue with all this, one of rights. If he has the right to posit I then surely must have the right to refute? It is not the essence of freedom when we exercise our ability to disagree if done so without malice and with reason? I seem to be in a minority, though I think I might with considerable confidence contend that I am actually not, and represent in these words an argument that most would wish to make but few would dare to (so only the impression of minority then? Now where have we seen or heard of that situation before…. Stalin’s Russia, Hitler’s Germany, many many African and South American dictatorially governed nations, repeatedly in Orwell’s, Chomsky’s, Vidal’s, Parenti’s writing and even concerning nominal democracies etc?), and as a minority where is the protection of my rights in all this, why am I the bad guy to want to ask questions and if I’m wrong be convinced by an argument rather than a new law that states I am the bad guy if I think in a way that is consistent with science? It is, according to Milton, Payne, Luxembourg, Hitchens et al, my right as a listener to hear what words are written and spoken so that I may argue with them. To take that away from me would be the real wrong because the real harm of me not taking the proposed postulate seriously has no real consequences as it would in racial or sexual relations, but by preventing in popular culture the very questioning of this single view of identity, the one that says there are more than two genders, those leftists that mean well build a prison of opinions that they will occupy alongside me, for how can one be both for freedom and against it at the same time?

If there is a right then there must be an injustice or an unfairness that that right fights against, that is the nature of establishing a right. So is there an injustice to being a man or a woman if you do not wish to be? does that mean that there are injustices in all the things we find ourselves being or not being? Is there, for example, an injustice to being of colour, badly endowed, fattened by your under-active thyroid, being short when all you want is to play basketball, being turned off by hairy armpits or a beer belly, being smart or stupid? Is your life unfair if you don’t get or get to be everything you want, if you cannot achieve stardom, if you aren’t rich and/or famous? What happens if I write this and nobody reads it, is that unjust, can I make people read and accept my view if I want that badly enough? I sound ridiculous now I know, imagine that…. Surely it’s no more ridiculous than to lobby government to allow for a truth to be rewritten in history? I’m referring to the movement for birth certificates to be allowed to be changed by trans persons to then say that they were not what they were observed to be at birth, by a medical professional no less (this is Orwell’s 1984 surely, Eurasia has always been at war with Airstrip One!), you can’t make a fact wrong if you don’t like it.. or can you?

So we have all been told by the media, our bosses, by the political correctness mafia, to support the delusions of this and other individuals, we cannot mention our opposition no matter how logical or stable that objection may be. I have questions that I need answers to before I will accept that this is a woman before me, if I ever could (I suspect I could not). I like women, I am attracted to their various attractive traits, must I re-categorise what a woman is when I am describing them so as to not include this new type, and by re-categorising would I be in violation again? I have no desire to recategorize a transgender or a transsexual as anything other than those terms, what’s actually wrong with them as a definition, why can we not have these added into the mix and forget about the idea of shoehorning them into a description that has to be reviewed and decided to be a socially constructed definition rather than a scientific one. It has been the physician that has used his or her knowledge of the anatomy that has defined the child at birth, yes they cannot see inside but they can see genitals. If not them then the scans will have revealed it in early pregnancy, “Mrs Jones you’re having a boy”. I’ve had that Socially Constructed Group argument on social media, it’s actual nonsense from people who don’t realise they’re spouting relativism, and relativism is a thought experiment used in philosophy not a real thing before now, nobody has ever thought that everything is defined by humans and nothing is measurable.

And what of a real woman’s perspective, are they, as a gender, expected to accept this new entity into their ranks as legitimately the same to those who can bear children themselves? Of course pedantic answers to that question will be plentiful such as “some women choose not to have children” or “some women cannot have children” but I would counter those arguments by saying that no matter whether they can, actually do, or actually don’t, they have the cells and the DNA that intends them to be that entity that could, and if they do not by some unluckiness then they are defective, but a woman nonetheless. That is the essence rather that the purpose of womanhood (do not think me a chauvinist, I am not). If the definition of a man is  human that is other than a woman then there must be a criteria that is other than a woman. This individual, in being different than a woman regardless of what is edited by the surgeons or effected by additional or suppressed hormones, remains other than in enough ways that he is not the same as a woman, he is a man of course. By the same reckoning I will not recognise those men who were once women as now self classified or recognised in social convention as men, they are not and never can be, for the reasons I have stated already.

As a further argument (one that I will not expand on here, but may in another essay), have men not oppressed and and taken enough from women historically already? Could we not leave them the humanity, the intuition, the nurturing nature, the attractiveness and all the other noble and wonderful traits of their gender that make them arguably better than us men? Must we try to take that from them also, and must we take away their sporting achievements too (that’s happening) by declaring that we are no longer the 200th best weight lifter in the male category but the no1 in the women’s? As it becomes more equal and more acceptable to be a woman in modernity, and some think it may even be an advantage, there may be a bit of jealousy apparent in the motivations of those who wish to become women rather than remain men. We all wish to be noticed and accepted, is it possible that while the media, the business world, society and governments have pointed the telescope and the microscope towards women, that certain males feel left out, marginalised? Trans is certainly a way of getting noticed and forcing the focus towards oneself (a peculiarity of modern times, fame at whatever cost, as a right regardless of the lack of any noticeable reason or discernible skill), it is an attractive prospect that if one is willing to play the part one gets to be (for now) quite a controversial figure, a pioneer, a campaigner, an inspiration. The thing about campaigners is of course that they are vindicated and validated by support, but the world is such a truly crazy place that anyone can gain support for any craziness they wish to put out there, if you don’t believe that then just look online to see what some facebook groups are in favour of, holy fudge!

A friend of mine thinks that it’s all a conspiracy, it’s driven upon the populous by social influencers unwittingly doing the bidding of the powerful people in the shadows that really run the world. I’m not sure I can go as far in that direction, but I’m also not sure that he’s wrong. I can’t explain what’s going on either though, I can only speculate and use the things I’ve seen and the words I’ve read to come up with a theory of my own, to that end I will put forward this; there are now so many competing theories, doctrines, dogmas and religions in the world that are fighting against science, and are more attractive than death being the end of existence, that they have a relative power in the numbers of persons who adhere to them. If an individual believes something, and that something cannot be proven correct or incorrect, then that individual must by implication be willing to allow the same for any other who also believes something. With the world full of believers, a resurgence of religiosity if you wish to call it that, may be to blame for our allowing other kookie speculations and postulates.

Freud thought that people needed belief, remove god and they will invent god, man has always run from total responsibility. Sartre said that to accept atheism (being without a guiding deity that knows better than you) is to become responsible entirely for ones own existence and acts, a responsibility that may be way too much for most people. I believe that self importance and self worth have become as important to people as Oxygen and food, that even love and the sacrifice that comes with it plays second fiddle to the introspected self’s need for external validity. Maybe the self is in turmoil and we are all so unsure of what is correct that we will latch onto anything that is attractive, this theory may explain other weird happenings in modernity such as a series of fascists becoming popular and the lack of resistance shown by the populous toward the now disgusting unequal division of all things. Again I am away from the direct subject, but now I am trying to find out what enables this phenomenon, what makes it for the first time in modern history an achievable falsehood, what are the social conditions for it’s reality?

Another pal thinks all this nonsense is the result of decadence, a western society that now has to invent its own problems because technology has slowly eroded our natural struggles concerning survival, health, accumulation of shit we don’t need, conditions of homing and abundance of food. We are so bored with all the leisure time we have that our ancestors and forefathers didn’t, and stimulus for our large problem-solving brains is lacking, so we make that stimulus artificially by trying to protest and campaign about something. When we look around for a cause that isn’t already fully subscribed to, and that we cam find both a certain uniqueness in, and the possibility to make it a personal crusade that throws light upon the campaigner as a hero figure, we can find only trivialities. Those important matters such as homelessness, inequality, little brown children that have to walk for miles to get water, badly treated animals etc, have so many people highlighting them and working towards that mythical capitalist solution that there is no room to draw attention to oneself contained in them. So the selfishness of getting noticed and being validated points the needle at veganism, trans rights, worrying that the actor is not in reality what they are acting (how weird is that one?), and the rewriting of historical facts as social truths that are more palatable to the modern mindset. I heard a guy say that Friends, the TV show, was no longer acceptable because none of the group were black, the reason why that is ridiculous is that the show depicted upper middle-class professionals living in apartments in a well-to-do part of New York in the 90s, and the sample was 6 persons forming a social group. So what is it about the depiction of what would likely occur, and we could have likely measured at the time, as a fiction that is incorrect? Acceptable demographic groups are built by TV executives and music producers, they are themselves not organically occurring entities, as people tend to gravitate to other people that they have things in common with.

We all know of the story of the emperors new clothes, where the point is not that the child blurts out the truth, but where each individual in front of the naked emperor believes that they are the only one that knows that truth, so they do not speak, and worse they try to quiet the child. Each observer is a victim of mass gaslighting (doubt brought on by a persuasion that seeks to create it), rather than hysteria (coming to actually believe a truth held by a large group) such as in the manipulated partner, he or she who is being abused by a loved one. I have come to another conclusion also, one that may be alarming and may have abusive implications, that to manipulate the period of sexual confusion that each child goes through in the early part of their sexual development by presenting them with choices that they may feel as pressure to get their definition of self correct in the eyes of the well-meaning parent (as children often act to please mum or dad rather than to express their own will, and because their will is transient and momentary, we teach them compliance and reward it, and they’re not as dumb as we imagine), is to recruit them to a cause, your cause, for your purpose of feeling like you’re in the right tribe or adhering in the right way to the right current social conditions of the time. Hiding in the false comfort of the majority. It may not be moral to deliberately make young persons more confused than they already are, it may even someday be an act of criminality, at least I hope so, for the worst crimes are ever those against the most defenceless, and a crime against a child should find no easy forgiveness.

So if he is to be a woman because he wishes it and he takes steps to act the part then I wish to know what the difference would be if I decided that I was a black man? I could dye my skin darker than it is now, wear African traditional garments and change my name to a culturally African name, after all we are all descended from one African mother (genetic Eve). Would I then be able to claim a heritage and a selfhood that was not mine at birth? This is expanding the original premise on it’s logical trajectory until it provides an argument, to the originator, that is an uncomfortable consequence of their position if accepted (as it must be for their argument to hold). The premise is that I should identify them as they wish to be identified based on their own summation of what is not provably true (that they are a woman), we take this premise and see what doors it opens in respect to what then must follow, my wish to be identified as an individual of colour and genetic origin (of course I’m not of African genetic origin, not recently anyway), the ridiculous (absurd) aspect is then exposed, that if we hold something to be a truth then everything it results in must be a truth also, and the person who suggests it in the first place, those that support it, and those that defend it even if they do not support it must be in acceptance of the consequences of it, or be proved in error.

I wish to be argued with, I hope I am wrong and as always I am willing to be so, but for now I must stand by my submission that: If he is a woman then I am a black man, 7ft tall and with a really big willy, and you can also be what ever you wish to be, so feel free to pick something….

Paul S Wilson