I’ve got a new piece up at UnHerd:
What we’re witnessing here is not trans genocide but trans radicalisation. The warning signs are everywhere: grimacing skulls that promise “DEATH BEFORE DETRANSITION”, knives, baseball bats wrapped in barbed wire, assault rifles painted in the pastel tones of the trans flag, torrents of rape and death threats, the grim vow that “EVERY DAY IS TRANS DAY OF VENGEANCE.”
In the wake of Monday’s mass shooting, online trans communities erupted with panic and self-pity — even self-justification. The Trans Resistance Network released a press statement lamenting the “second and more complex tragedy… that Aiden or Audrey Hale… felt he had no other effective way to be seen than to lash out by taking the life of others, and by consequence, himself,” and vowing that trans people “will not be eradicated or erased.” Rather than repudiating a dangerous narrative that produces violence against the self and others, the Trans Resistance Network reinforces it.
I think this sentence you wrote on Unherd is key "When a community mythologises martyrs, that community will recruit martyrs."
I read the piece on Unherd, but I don't want to pay them money, so I'm commenting here.
Among other things, I think what we are seeing is FTM transitioners acting out behavior which, in their minds, is male. Males do most of the killing in our society, and any kind of "male" behavior assures the FTM transitioners that they are real males. If you add to that the testosterone that they are taking (which increases their hostility) and the unfortunate tendency of the human mind to become fixated and obsessed on certain ideas, you get trans activists like this.
Of course, the MTF transitioners have been displaying their contempt for real women for a very long time. They claim to identify as women, but in reality they end up identifying as trans women because they know that real womanhood is not attainable for them. That inability to attain what they want the most makes them contemptuous of the real thing.
Given that the laws that are being passed in the red states only apply to children, all of this radicalization isn't necessary. If they would just accept the simple principle that children do not have the emotional maturity to transition, then they could all calm down. But they have swallowed the bullshit that being a trans child is some kind of horrible, horrible torture -- when in fact, the opposite may be true (because of the natural adaptability and resiliency of children). In other words, I think that trans feelings are more difficult for adults to deal with than they are for children. Children are already accustomed to waiting to become full adults, and waiting to transition becomes just one more thing they have to wait for (and hopefully some of them will out-grow those desires by the time they are 18). Unfortunately, children have been given the idea that it is their right to decide what their gender should be, and that complicates matters.
One more thing I want to say is that any kind of bad behavior on the part of trans people will reduce sympathy for them. Of course, both blacks and gays used civil disobedience to get what they wanted, but each of those groups constitutes about 8% of the population, so their civil disobedience couldn't be ignored. But when 1/2 percent of the population acts up, that's a different thing.