Thanks for this. Had not been following Mary Harrington's work.
This comment from your review stood out to me especially:
"And there is nothing sex-specific about the black hole of unanswered suffering, nihilism, and hatred of creation that now seems to occupy the spiritual center of our civilization and which is dragging us step by step towards self-abnegation. "
It may be less "hatred of creation" and more hatred of our own createdness that we are observing (that may actually be what you mean). If God is real, then we are caught up in something not of our own choosing - we are derivative and not self-defining. The impression is growing in me that much of what we're observing is a cry of resentment at having the circumstances of our existence, especially in regard to sexuality, defined by anyone other than ourselves. The Pill, transgenderism et al are, on this basis, just various means of giving the finger to God.
This is a question that was identified long ago: "Shall what is formed say to Him who formed it, 'why did you make me thus?'" (Paul the apostle in his letter to the Roman church)
Well, if God is real SOMEONE has to be made accountable for such a botched creation. Who that someone might be is pretty much the question at issue in the first 11ish chapters of the Bible's book of Genesis. Whether God is to blame depends entirely on what you believe about whether human agency is real - and is not revoked merely on the basis of bad behavior, whether God did delegate dominion on earth to human beings (the assertion of Genesis), and whether it is possible for love to exist at all in the absence of true freedom. It's easy to blame God, but he may not have been the only actor on the stage. Mostly I suspect we blame him because we resent the fact that his conduct in these matters hasn't conformed to our own expectations.
Hmm, what a conundrum. God created us as beings with free will, yet God prizes and desires obedience. (Those who willingly obey God’s law and respect what God has ordained are characterized in the Bible as wise.)
Free will doesn't mean do whatever, no consequences. If it did "will" would be meaningless, as nothing would matter.
It means you get to choose your own adventure. The wise choose their adventures wisely. The stupid turn to destroy themselves and others who love them, turn to crime, feed their ego, go to the hospital with home appliances in their rear orifice, et cetera.
All of those things have been discussed and answered (even if not to the satisfaction of everybody), including by Christianity, way before AD 1400. In fact, Christianism itself was among other things an answer against despair about the "botched creation" (popular in neo-Platonic and gnostic circles centuries before the Fall of Rome even).
It's not like we have discovered the idea of a "botched creation"/"why bad things happen" and those "at AD 1400" haven't yet. Judaism and Christianity had already discussed the Fall, and even feature a God-turned-man that was resented, ridiculed, tortured, and executed (how's that for "bad things happening to good people"?).
Even the Book of Job, 5-6 centuries before Christ, goes as deep as everything that we moderns came up with into this subject.
> You honestly can't think that that old book contains all answers. Discounting all the progress of science, learning how things really work, instead of believing fairytales explaining everything away.
That's irrelevant though. I didn't say it contains the answers to how electricity works or blood circulation or what's a black hole, so the "progress of science" and "how things really work" don't need to come into play in answering your original question. If we stick to the topic of "botched creation" it's not like Christianity didn't address it, or that they were "happy go lucky" about it until 1400 AD or so. You may not like their answer, but not only did they addressed the matter, but it was the core of what they were addressing.
> My point is not claiming the existence of creator guilty of botched creation, but of unlikelihood of such creation interpretation of reality having any merit.
Well, if we accept Christianity's answers on the matter, there's no "botched creation". There's human agency and there's evil, and there's an own choice to explore it and see what happens, even if it means suffering. People weren't content with "peace, love, and understanding" (whether in the Christian Garden of Eden, or in some idillyc peaceful pre-agrarian community).
The whole "progress of science, learning how things really work" also taught us how to better kill people, how to exploit nature to our gain, how to manipulate things to our benefit (and the detriment of others) and so on. That's the story of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. We couldn't just leave it in leaving blissfully, it was beneath us, that's "for the birds".
As a young man in the early 1980s I read several dozen books about intellectual / ideological lesbianism (starting at the jump-off point of feminist Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex).
To my surprise, rather than being obsessed with actual sexual activity like much male homosexual literature of the time, intellectual lesbians were theorizing and speculating about eliminating men from the reproductive process. The content was not at all about celebrating sexuality between women but about reproduction and how technological advances could make men existentially irrelevant. There was also advice about how to conceive girls, not boys.
It all seemed very sci-fi and dystopian at the time--not to mention full of anger and utterly joyless. It also turns out to have been prophetic.
UN: “Interventions aimed at influencing fertility rates are never the answer"
UN: "contraception and abortion are basic human rights"
So according to the UN and NGO-ocracy (Mary's term) apparently intervening to lower fertility rates is a human right, but trying to raise them is an assault on human rights.
"Learning that the official global position is now that even extinction would be preferable to any possible discouragement of infinite autonomy, some of us can’t help but wonder if, somewhere along the line, liberal feminism might have gone a bit off the rails…"
I practically fell out of my chair on this line. This may be the funniest thing I've ever read here, and there have been lots of good ones.
The line I find most disturbing in that video interview of Mary is her summary of queer theory: "queer theory is the idea that there should be no norms to how we are or how we exist in the world"
It is only in modern times that "human" has been inclusive of all of homo sapiens. However, with no norms about what is unique to human biology or behavior, that inclusive definition will well be up for grabs sooner instead of later. Forget "what is a woman?" The critical question is "what is a human?" If "biological human female" is no longer sufficient to define "woman", why should we have any confidence that "member of homo sapiens" will remain sufficient to define "human"?
American progressives already insist that blacks who hold "incorrect" political views aren't really black. The embrace of euthanasia indicates that at least some homo sapiens are no viewed as fully human. Combining these two logical positions does not take you anywhere good.
Having now watched Parts One and Two of Mary Harrington's interview on Michael Nayna's The Process, I'm reminded of an excellent book "The Meaning of Hitler" by Sebastian Hafner, which is the most insightful critique of Hitler's rise to power.
Hafner writes that Hitler's success was the result of the fact he was a reckless nihilist at a time when seemingly powerful German institutions were demoralized, rotten and discredited. Hitler attacked seemingly invincible domestic adversaries and they immediately collapsed, which shocked the world and made Germans and many others think there was some positive value to Hitler's program, which--of course--there was not. He was nothing but a destroyer.
We are in a similar time when barbarians are being promoted by our ruling class into a desert of leaderless corruption and a pervasive sense of meaninglessness.
I was in university in the late 70s / early 80s and was told by professors that there was no such thing as human nature. My study of poetry over millennia convinced me they were lying, but more importantly, society was healthier back then--even though under stress--and ordinary people and the leaders of most civilized countries didn't need such esoteric proof to know that human nature is real and it's important to act accordingly.
The last two minutes of Part Two when Mary posits a positive program are touching and sad. The rot is already so far advanced--it happened in our parent's generation in the guise of prosperity, sexual liberation, Boomer narcissism and (what was then called) radical feminism and is now government policy across the OECD. As Mary suggests, most people in their 30s and 40s were not raised by a loving married couple who were mutually affectionate and respectful. It's a struggle for them to re-invent the model for themselves without personal examples to guide them.
I pray they succeed--the alternative is for us to await the appearance of the Beast.
Maybe, just maybe those zany Catholics who spoke of the corrosive effects of contraception were right all along... Maybe the amount of fun you get to have by abandoning long-time norms is short-lived, and followed by greater misery—even an existential crisis?
My thoughts reading this book is “wow she sounds so Catholic!” If people really delve deep into works such as JPII theology of the body, she lines up pretty closely with those doctrines.
For those interested in other authors who write in this space, I recommend Carl Truman’s The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, Edith Stein’s Woman, and Abigail Fatale’s The Genius of Gender.
I enjoyed Mary Harington’s book a lot, in particular the parts about pre-industrial relations between the sexes. I feel like I’ve actually seen something like this with my own eyes.
I live and work in northern Vietnam, my wife is Vietnamese and comes from a town halfway between Hanoi and the Chinese border. We regularly make trips back to visit the farm where she grew up. It always feel like I’m travelling back in time, not decades but centuries. I’ve had plenty of opportunity to observe village life in rural Vietnam.
My brother and sister in law run a ‘subsistence household’ like the one Harington talks about. Actually the Mr has recently left the land to work in a factory close to the city. I see the way the work is divided, and there is a strong sense of solidarity. Yes, women sit apart from men at large gathering and are largely tasked with the cooking, which to some would seem a terrible situation. But I’ve never experienced anything but joy on those occasions, lots of laughter, lots of rice wine.
I’m not saying this is an ideal situation - the people in this community are poor, but there is something about the sureness of footing that makes life in the countryside here, and I’ve spent a while thinking of the word, merrier.
They know nothing of meat lego and our rapid descent into nihilism, except perhaps the younger generations on TikTok. I thought it was interested how NS Lyons finished this article and I have to agree: as scarcity have forged these tight communities here, what will be our scarcity?
this essay made me think of the current Trans/gender/cyborg ideology as being a reaction to the feminine.
for instance, a natal male wants to embrace femininity in their transition, whereas most natal girls seek to negate the feminine thru their transition.
but both are either a celebration or rejection of femininity. where is the masculine in this scenario?
we aren’t seeing the FtM running around afterward like libertine gay men y’know...
I think a certain amount of 'real feminism has never been tried' is justified, even if only as a way to make the book legible to people used to thinking in the terms that currently predominate - let's be honest, 'Embodied Reactionaries Against Cyborg Theocracy' is unlikely to shift many copies. But you're right that it leaves a gap in the market for a book that addresses the same argument to men. As you've identified for a while, currently only Bronze Age Mindset does anything of the sort.
Lyons, I suspect, knows without a Judeo-Christian weltanschauung, this reactionary project is doomed. Technology has made us rich. We serve mammon. We hate our old master. We aren't going to give up the benefits of technology. No one is going to embrace poverty and the 'natural,' except Ted Kaczinski types. We are addicts to the power and convenience the experimental method has tempted us with; we are tempted by the secret knowledge about matter, we can't unlearn technology. It's not markets, per se, it's what markets offer to sell. We want it. Cognitively rejecting what medical technology has become, I understand. Abandoning medicine so you can trust in God and Nature isn't going to happen. So, who is going to remake medical technology into a humble servant of the living God? Who? We the people would find it intolerable. Face it, we are doomed. Mankind is committing suicide. "O, Brave New World"
My comment is a little cryptic and it wanders off-topic w/out letting on. Our global economy is utterly dependent on electricity to operate. The global electrical grid is utterly vulnerable to being completely destroyed by a massive Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). Trillions of tons of charged particles, plasma, are routinely ejected from the sun. We have never shielded the grid to protect it. Earth's magnetosphere induces these particles into conductors and the irregular spikes in amps and volts destroys the transformers and other attachments when the CME event is of sufficient size.
There is indisputable scientific/historical evidence these massive CMEs frequently hit the earth, like every two to five hundred years. In the grid era, there have been three, very destructive CMEs since 1859.
The article talks about how cognitively entangled our minds are with technology. It is nothing compared to how physically dependent we are on the grid to live. There is no going back to familial economies of scale. We are going to have a CME event that will turn the lights out on the grid. Globally, nothing will work. The pumps won't pump water, or fuel. The internet will go dark. The infrastructure to repair the grid will be without power too. The stores will be dark and empty. Global.
Our dependency on our unnatural, man made, economy is complete. In the past we would have seen ominous auroras is tropical latitudes and that would be the end of it. Imagine what a pickle we would be in if everything quit working?
In a way, the insanity of feminism is a symptom of the real insanity of imagining we can sustain our dependence on technology. We can't. We are going to be destroyed by our belief in technology. It is not really suicide. But we are doing it to ourselves.
Ted Kaczinski was an evil man. But he was right about technology destroying us.
Let me offer an anecdote. One hundred years ago, if you wanted milk, cream, butter. You had to live in close proximity to cows. Now, for efficiency dairies are scaled up to milk thousands of thousands of cows in a single location. All the processes on the dairy are dependent on the electrical grid. If the grid goes down, you can't feed the cows, water the cows, milk the cows, refrigerate the milk, pasteurize the milk, bottle the milk, transport the milk. With the current expansion of GPS fencing, soon you won't even be able to confine the cows.
My scenario of a CME (solar flare) collapsing the grid is not controversial. It's more or less inevitable in the next couple, three hundred years. Perhaps very much sooner. Our economy can't simply adjust. Food shelter and water will not be distributed. Urban housing is unlivable outside of the tropics without electricity. (it's merely miserable in the tropics) How do you suppress fire without water?
I'm no prepper. Technology dominates my life as much as yours. Feminism is an economic impulse driven the technologies that emerge from the applied experimental method. It has no place in the economies that predate the modern era. In short, it's always been a ideological, unnatural idea.
Families are natural, economic, hierarchical, and inherently unequal. The family can always survive, the current technological economy can not.
The problem is the windings in the transformers. And the fuel for generation. The VLTs (Very Large Transformers) in generating stations take years to build. Each one is more or less unique. There are only six facilities in the world that make them. If all the VLTs melt down - well I don't know what you do. The generating stations can't transmit electricity to the substations, where all the transformers have been fried. The substations can't distribute electricity, but if they xould, you couldn't use it because all the distribution transformers have been ruined and are inoperable. Not talking about a doomsday fantasy, this is a highly probable event that will occur sooner rather than later.
Only a fool would bet against it. Totally different than AGW caused by increasing levels of atmospheric CO2. That is not happening
Biblical Christian here. We are in a “post-Christian” culture and floundering badly. Perhaps a better book to explore and hand to young and old is the Bible.
I believe you are correct, jack, but there are lots of people who are unwilling to respond to God, but might be willing to take a step in His direction via a dissenting progressive feminist like Mary Harrington.
The steps to conversion are often many and small. I'll take any book that moves people in the right direction.
The Seven Story Mountain by Thomas Merton charts his conversation from indifferent atheist to a monk. When it was published, it met with great interest and he became a spokesperson for the religious life and a critic of modern society. The book is all but forgotten now and, I have to wonder, if it would even be published today.
Is it possible feminism achieved all their goals, is now struggling for relevance, is bent on self preservation as an industry, and so has gone in search of new grails? So, having largely fixed societal inequities, it becomes the injustice of childbirth that they fight: noble souls.
As our author explains in his military industrial complex piece, people desperately want their lives to be meaningful, to be a hero in one’s own story, and fighting injustices – it’s exciting and self affirming. You by comparison are ignoble.
My take: life has an equilibrium, relax. Their mutilation of their own children will play out in the most disastrous possible ways. A short 10 years from now, when these little Frankenstein‘s are committing suicide and depressed and disgusting, this terrible tragedy will be seen as a mania. Give them all the rope they need. It is their children that they destroy; shameful and stupid, discordant with nature, my advice, luxuriate in the schadenfreude.
You underestimate the malicious greed of the thing that is running this hell-show. Mutilated children are victims of abuse no matter whose they are - there can be no schadenfreude for them. But it's not just the children of zealots who are caught up in the trans movement. Already several jurisdictions have taken children away from their non-consenting parents in the name of progress. Schools in many places are able to initiate the transitioning process without notifying parents. Here in one state of Australia parents are already banned by law from doing anything other than wholeheartedly affirm a child who expresses the vaguest interest in the gender blob. If you care about the children you know you should understand that this directly threatens them and so much more besides.
Yes, there is a kind of systemic greed of the administrative state in this regard. (The term "nanny state" may take on an extra dimension if you're familiar with the babysitter-horror film genre; cf. "The Omen," "The Hand that Rocks the Cradle," et al). Blob seeks to expand and consolidate, including by creating and absorbing little blobs, er, Meat Legos.
There is also a very literal greed behind the medical industry's rapid and near-total plunge forward into gender blob theology and procedure. As with the opioid pusher craze, I am convinced—as are, I'm sure, most readers here—that ten or twenty years hence, we will see an awful lot of lawsuits and finger-pointing and heart-rending docudramas on Netflix, or ChatGPTV, about how some evil wizards ruthlessly exploited the poor children of today.
There's a reason why some activities are age restricted. Adults who made the laws understood that 18 (at a minimum) should be the age you could sign up for military service, drink, consent to sex (yes, I know some states it's lower), get married. It's to protect children who aren't grown up enough mentally or emotionally to make good decisions. A line has to be drawn somewhere and that line is being erased. Decades ago Patrick Moynihan wrote an essay, Defining Deviancy Down, and he was right. In the essay he observed, as more activities that had been defined as abnormal were included within the bounds of normal, the very definition of deviancy expanded to include them -- perfect example: Sam Briton flaunting his activities and proclivities and, until he was caught red-handed with theft, celebrated by the progressives.
I think that if society had pursued transgenderism in a measured way (if there is such a thing), then perhaps the "myth of progress" could have continued on for most. However, the novel surgeries and medical treatments will surely cause the next generation to react so strongly that this "progress" cannot last.
On the flip side, perhaps the next generation will pursue full emancipation from the body in reaction to the trauma - just as our tech billionaires planned all along.
the destination of this train (post-Locke and certainly post-Mill) has always been "full emancipation from the body". Liberalism is about liberating people from unchosen constraints, and the body itself is the ultimate unchosen constraint.
I think they will insist on the continuation of “the myth of progress.” Any acknowledgment of the Frankenstein horrors will simply be accepted as pioneering necessities.
I think Lyons has described the more insidious aspects of it in his piece on the "Abolition of Man" - but I think the move is toward full virtual reality. Perhaps "The Matrix" or "Ready Player One" serve as different flavors of what some billionaires want. I believe Zuckerberg already revealed his plans and is betting on full virtual reality winning the day.
The argument that pre-industrial women lived much more biologically and socially authentic lives, and that modernity and birth control have broken the ancient and precious rhythms of childbirth and care, casting women down into a desperate spiral, chasing after the chimera of “equal rights” seems very odd to me.
And criticism that the birth control pill is “a “medicine” taken not to cure something that had gone awry with the natural functions of the human body, but to “improve” on the body by deliberately changing how it naturally functions.” is an even odder statement.
In pre-modern, pre-birth control times, women would give birth to as many children as possible before they (often) died from the process. They then found themselves as care givers to huge families of 10 or more children, and all the back breaking labor that would have gone with that. I find it very hard to see this kind of life as some kind of deeply fulling existence, filled with “regular community and charitable involvement, romance and sex.” as you suggest.
Moreover, criticizing birth control pills as “a “medicine” taken not to cure something that had gone awry with the natural functions of the human body, but to “improve” on the body by deliberately changing how it naturally functions” seems to miss the fact that most modern medicine does that. My cholesterol, blood pressure, arthritis, acid reflux are all natural functions of my body, a body which evolution would have ending its life at about age 35. The medication that I take for all of those conditions keep me alive and healthy by treating those perfectly natural conditions.
I am not surprised that we are led from these ideas to the “horrors” of the transgender movement, complete with a graphic description of severed breasts and surgically manufactured penises. UCLA studies tell us that less than 1% of Americans identify as transgender, yet that does not stop the conservative bullshit machine from grinding out unrelenting outrage over anything associated with this subject. Are there really no greater dangers to our society in today’s fraught world than whether or not a trans person uses a particular bathroom? Can we not give it a rest?
Conservative intellectuals and commentators seem prone to bending history and facts to match their ideological viewpoint, especially to explain why things that irritate them continue to be so popular. I am not suggesting that feminism hasn’t had its downside, or that the extreme ideologies of the feminist left are not irritating sometimes, but we can still try to hold on to basic common sense in an ideological debate.
The idea that principles actually matter is absolutely central to conservatism (or any coherent philosophy for that matter). It should be obvious by now, certainly if you're reading my work, that the debate over trans is about fundamental principles, including what it means to be human and how we constitute reality and truth. Altering the answer to something that fundamental will inevitably go on to structure our whole society and all its norms and morals, including the value of human life. So arguably no, there is nothing more important - certainly not things as mundane as tax rates or whatever, which are in comparison of almost no comparative importance to our civilization and collective future. The "outrage " exists on this issue because it is, a bit like slavery was, an issue of totally existential disagreement. There is no machine required to produce it, and no one is going to calm down about it anytime soon.
On medicine: the difference is that if you take a pill to relieve arthritis, say, you are returning the body to its normal functional operating equilibrium; if you take a birth control pill you are changing its normal equilibrium.
I did not say pre-industrial life was 'filled with “regular community and charitable involvement, romance and sex”,' but that (summarizing Harrington) these aspects of life were marketized post-industrialization. She details this extensively.
With respect (and I appreciate your thoughtful answer) the assignment of the subject of transgender men and women as a matter defining what it means to be human, or how we constitute reality and truth or that it will inevitably go on to structure our whole society and all its norms and morals, including the value of human life, is your own intellectual construct. It would hardly be considered some kind of universal truth by most people, though it may to you or to like minded thinkers.
In my view, this view is just an extension of the deep discomfort that many conservative people feel about homosexuality, another subject the rage machinery cannot leave alone, and another subject that some might see as simple bigotry. By elevating the subject of transgender people to the kind of existential importance that you do, you remove it from common sense or logical discussion. There are all kinds of social deviation in the world, but this one in particular seems to drive the right crazy (also because the subject has been cynically used to whip up outrage on the right for political reasons.)
As to whether or not my cholesterol level or arthritis medication is “returning my body to its normal operating equilibrium”, you are quite wrong. My body, in its normal operating equilibrium would be wracked with all kinds of problems that the medication treats and I would die in my 30’s. This medication is allowing me to deviate from my normal operating equilibrium and live a longer and better life.
I could choose, if I wanted, to just die of heart disease or live a life of continual arthritis pain (conditions which come from my age, my natural equilibrium). A woman can choose to have a child or not, as I choose whether to die of heart disease or not. I wonder by what authority you determine yourself to be the judge of what the normal operating equilibrium of a woman is?
I understand that this was a book review and not an essay, but your opinions, functional and philosophical, seem clear, at least to me. Thanks for responding to my post.
Robert Gardner: it is bigger than you say, and we are not merely fearful bigots and intolerant moralists.
“ the gathering darkness of totalitarianism that we face seems to be nothing less than a Faustian effort to deconstruct everything it means to be human” NS Lyons.
We are in the midst of a societal mania against any imposed pattern, of which the transgender movement is but one small component. We are being consumed by a sick and dangerous Gnostic religion that will lead us to ruin. Your prevarication about common sense combined with your belief that we are simply close minded bigots is incorrect.
As usual, Marshall McLuhan offers sage advice:
“ The aspiration of our time for wholeness, empathy, and depth of awareness is a natural adjunct of electric technology.... (the extending our central nervous system to envelop the world).....the mark of our times is it’s revulsion against impose patterns...... we are suddenly eager to have things and people express their beings totally. There is a deep faith to be had in this new attitude - a faith that concerns the ultimate harmony of all being.
“It’s gnosticism all the way down”: the trans movement is a misguided religious crusade and yes gender dysphoria is real. We are in grave danger.
“The gathering darkness of totalitarianism”? This kind of over-blown rhetoric is a hall mark of the conservative intellectual seeking philosophical legitimacy for one cherished gripe or another. “The world is ending, so listen to me….” We have plenty of things to be worried about. Our civilization is actually in peril. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of our current political and philosophical division, is that we cannot agree about what the genuine perils are. How you transform the trans movement (whatever that is) into a religious crusade, I cannot imagine. And how you translate that fear into a great danger is a mystery to me. We have real dangers in our society, the steep degradation of our democracy, the normalization of mass shootings, the almost total corporatization of our media, the ruination of our healthcare system. Some healthy curiosity about the nature of bigotry would be in order, when frothing at the mouth over LGBTQ conspiracy theories.
You know, I really tried to read that link but it made almost no sense to me and I don't see the relevence. That kind of thing is what it is. What it has to do with the suggestion that the right's discomfort with the subject has a basis in bigotry went right passed me.
UCLA studies are not current. I have a teenager. In a very, very red/conservative state. There are at a minimum three friends in her circle who “identify” as transgender, and one who has gone far enough to get started on medical transition before the state outlawed it. This is not minor and we are not angry enough about what’s happening to kids. If it were the tiny fraction of transgender people out living their life as they have for the last few decades, we would not be talking about this. But I am not overstating the fact that they are aggressively coming for the kids. I can’t be made to deny what I’m seeing with my own eyes.
"They are aggressively coming for the kids"? Do you have any idea how that sounds? Who is coming for the kids, specifically, and how are they doing it? Have you considered how adolescent girls, when faced with the prospect of being judged by every boy in the school on their sexual rating, might send out signals that they are playing for the other team? Might even believe it? Have you considered that there might be another narrative here, other motivations?
Well if you live in a blue state (or Canada), the State is coming for them.
Pretty much every blue state (and Canada) has passed laws proclaiming that parents can and will lose custody of their children if they fail to "affirm" their child's gender identity and approve "gender affirming care", which means puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and genital mutilations and radical double masectomies. (There are several hundred radical double masectomies performed each year on minors in the US with a diagnosis of "gender dysphoria", per a Reuters analysi of insurance claims: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-transyouth-data)
There are 330 million people in the United States. The Reuters article you reference says “A small but increasing number of U.S. children diagnosed with gender dysphoria are choosing medical interventions to express their identity and help alleviate their distress.” The operative word here is “small”. There are many reasons gender dysphoria might be showing up in children and neither of us are professionally qualified to determine why that actually is. Maybe it is the result of profound upheavals in our society as a result of accelerating change driven by technology. Maybe it is the result of a mysterious cabal of corporate elites working behind closed doors, to control the media in order to drive our civilization into the arms of Satan. But whatever it is, the numbers are vanishingly small, compared to other public health issues facing children (like gun violence). Regarding blue-state laws, the PBS.org article you reference says these laws are “to enact safeguards against bans or limits on transgender and abortion healthcare in Republican states.” That is, they are in reaction to the draconian laws being passed which discriminate against LGBQ people or limit abortion.
Read the actual laws. They do what I say they do, remove parental rights to determine their kids health care.
As for "vanishingly small" numbers:
>The Komodo analysis of insurance claims found 56 genital surgeries among patients ages 13 to 17 with a prior gender dysphoria diagnosis from 2019 to 2021.
>Among teens, “top surgery” to remove breasts is more common. In the three years ending in 2021, at least 776 mastectomies were performed in the United States on patients ages 13 to 17 with a gender dysphoria diagnosis, according to Komodo’s data analysis of insurance claims. This tally does not include procedures that were paid for out of pocket.
>At least 14,726 minors started hormone treatment with a prior gender dysphoria diagnosis from 2017 through 2021, according to the Komodo analysis.
But if you want to say these numbers are "vanishingly rare", fine. Then you should have no objection to laws banning these procedures on minors, since they already happen so rarely as not to even matter. You agree with that, don't you?
It is clearly important for you to make this issue one of huge importance. Let’s consider, for instance, that suicide is the second-leading cause of death among people age 15 to 24 in the U.S. Nearly 20% of high school students report serious thoughts of suicide and 9% have made an attempt to take their lives, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (re UCLA Health). Those are serious numbers. And of course gun violence is the number one cause of death in children. So in this context, 56 genital surgeries, in a country of 130,000,000 people doesn’t seem as comparatively important to me, especially since I don’t know anything about the individual cases at all. These are serious surgeries, and not to be ignored, but it is not rational to elevate them to national crisis status.
I am not saying that these health/gender issues are not serious, and that parents and I think people generally should treat the subject with weight. It is the near hysteria that the subject draws from the right, suggestions of all kinds of diabolical conspiracies and world ending dangers that I am objecting to. But I am afraid that we are talking at cross purposes here, that neither of us will convince the other of his point of view. But thanks for responding.
I know exactly how that sounds. I wish it weren’t true, but it is. And it’s not just teenagers, although that world has descended into bizarre madness that I really cannot describe if you refuse to recognize how insane it really is. But it’s worse than that. It’s animated programs and illustrated picture books aimed at small children promoting gender ideology. It’s in Disney programming and on YouTube Kids. My 8yo has a kid in his class who says he’s not sure if he’s a boy or a girl. It’s coordinated and it’s everywhere. If I didn’t HAVE to be aware of where it’s all coming from because I have kids, I would think it sounds crazy, too. I assure you, it’s not.
Here is what is crazy: It is very well established that American children are in danger for their lives due to the proliferation of guns in America. Guns are now the number one cause of death in children. And yet, rather than a rational movement towards gun control on the right, we see this over-blown and hysterical reaction to something that is actually hard to define, the homosexual agenda or the transgender phenomenon or whatever you might call it. You believe it is being “coordinated” and that it is “everywhere”. Who in the world would be coordinating it, and why would they? This is not a rational position. I know that many people are deeply uncomfortable with homosexuality for various reasons, and that transgender people seem to be some kind of unsettling deviation from the norm. Just because you are uncomfortable with something in the society does not make it a world-threatening crisis. And if you are uncomfortable with something, it may cause you to be hypersensitive to it, making you think you see it everywhere, but that does not mean it is actually saturating the culture. If you are genuinely worried about your children and children generally, you energy would be much better spent campaigning for gun control.
Not sure this is worth arguing. You are clearly concerned with guns and don’t seem to actually have children. And you seem stuck in a previous decade. Must be kind of nice, actually.
But you are right about one thing, there is nothing rational about it. Nothing. Which makes it worse. And again, I can’t deny what I see with my own eyes. This is not garbage I read on twitter or even substack. I don’t take veiled accusations of homophobia lightly. But until you watch someone you care about go from just being a happy gay person to being sucked into this perverse gender cult and see them literally undergo butcherous surgeries to affirm what is essentially a fantasy, I’m not sure you should be calling this overblown or hysterical.
Many of your ailments would not be a problem without the modern processed food diet. And many of todays medications cause side effects that in turn cause many other ailments. Example is a loved one’s diagnosis of CIDP which was treated with immunosuppression which caused the immune system to not control cancer cells which rapidly became the main health problem. It is huge hubris to believe medicine has all the answers. Much of our longevity is because of modern sewage treatment and clean water
The progressive cult promises that we can all become Nietzschean Ubermensch, and since this is obviously impossible, we have the confusion and nihilism of today along the desire to keep doubling down looking for more “rights” and the use of technology to gain them.
Unselfishness and sacrifice have gone "out" for everyone, not just women. Men (no! NOT ALL men) abandon their families with as much abandon as women (no! NOT ALL women) decline to have them. As you go on to say, "there is nothing sex-specific about it."
"The fullest expression of the War on Nature and the complete sanctification of “rights and choices” today is without doubt the transgender movement "
SO FAR. Furries haven't gone mainstream yet and there is probably a further move to be made in the cyborg realm. Not to mention something cannot even be imagined yet.
Thanks for this. Had not been following Mary Harrington's work.
This comment from your review stood out to me especially:
"And there is nothing sex-specific about the black hole of unanswered suffering, nihilism, and hatred of creation that now seems to occupy the spiritual center of our civilization and which is dragging us step by step towards self-abnegation. "
It may be less "hatred of creation" and more hatred of our own createdness that we are observing (that may actually be what you mean). If God is real, then we are caught up in something not of our own choosing - we are derivative and not self-defining. The impression is growing in me that much of what we're observing is a cry of resentment at having the circumstances of our existence, especially in regard to sexuality, defined by anyone other than ourselves. The Pill, transgenderism et al are, on this basis, just various means of giving the finger to God.
This is a question that was identified long ago: "Shall what is formed say to Him who formed it, 'why did you make me thus?'" (Paul the apostle in his letter to the Roman church)
Those who want to be God will always resent the fact that the position is already occupied.
Lucifer hardest hit.
yes, I might say more specifically, The Hatred of Humanity is the animating spirit of our times.
so much projection going on in public discourse.
accuse your enemy of what you despise in yourself...
Very solid post: spot on. I do not believe in God, but I find that no encumbrance to agreeing with your position.
A conflict from inception.
How about we crucify him?
Well, if God is real SOMEONE has to be made accountable for such a botched creation. Who that someone might be is pretty much the question at issue in the first 11ish chapters of the Bible's book of Genesis. Whether God is to blame depends entirely on what you believe about whether human agency is real - and is not revoked merely on the basis of bad behavior, whether God did delegate dominion on earth to human beings (the assertion of Genesis), and whether it is possible for love to exist at all in the absence of true freedom. It's easy to blame God, but he may not have been the only actor on the stage. Mostly I suspect we blame him because we resent the fact that his conduct in these matters hasn't conformed to our own expectations.
Hmm, what a conundrum. God created us as beings with free will, yet God prizes and desires obedience. (Those who willingly obey God’s law and respect what God has ordained are characterized in the Bible as wise.)
Free will doesn't mean do whatever, no consequences. If it did "will" would be meaningless, as nothing would matter.
It means you get to choose your own adventure. The wise choose their adventures wisely. The stupid turn to destroy themselves and others who love them, turn to crime, feed their ego, go to the hospital with home appliances in their rear orifice, et cetera.
I agree. As always with atheists, God and Scripture are way ahead of ron.
All of those things have been discussed and answered (even if not to the satisfaction of everybody), including by Christianity, way before AD 1400. In fact, Christianism itself was among other things an answer against despair about the "botched creation" (popular in neo-Platonic and gnostic circles centuries before the Fall of Rome even).
It's not like we have discovered the idea of a "botched creation"/"why bad things happen" and those "at AD 1400" haven't yet. Judaism and Christianity had already discussed the Fall, and even feature a God-turned-man that was resented, ridiculed, tortured, and executed (how's that for "bad things happening to good people"?).
Even the Book of Job, 5-6 centuries before Christ, goes as deep as everything that we moderns came up with into this subject.
> You honestly can't think that that old book contains all answers. Discounting all the progress of science, learning how things really work, instead of believing fairytales explaining everything away.
That's irrelevant though. I didn't say it contains the answers to how electricity works or blood circulation or what's a black hole, so the "progress of science" and "how things really work" don't need to come into play in answering your original question. If we stick to the topic of "botched creation" it's not like Christianity didn't address it, or that they were "happy go lucky" about it until 1400 AD or so. You may not like their answer, but not only did they addressed the matter, but it was the core of what they were addressing.
> My point is not claiming the existence of creator guilty of botched creation, but of unlikelihood of such creation interpretation of reality having any merit.
Well, if we accept Christianity's answers on the matter, there's no "botched creation". There's human agency and there's evil, and there's an own choice to explore it and see what happens, even if it means suffering. People weren't content with "peace, love, and understanding" (whether in the Christian Garden of Eden, or in some idillyc peaceful pre-agrarian community).
The whole "progress of science, learning how things really work" also taught us how to better kill people, how to exploit nature to our gain, how to manipulate things to our benefit (and the detriment of others) and so on. That's the story of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. We couldn't just leave it in leaving blissfully, it was beneath us, that's "for the birds".
Excellent post (as usual)!
As a young man in the early 1980s I read several dozen books about intellectual / ideological lesbianism (starting at the jump-off point of feminist Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex).
To my surprise, rather than being obsessed with actual sexual activity like much male homosexual literature of the time, intellectual lesbians were theorizing and speculating about eliminating men from the reproductive process. The content was not at all about celebrating sexuality between women but about reproduction and how technological advances could make men existentially irrelevant. There was also advice about how to conceive girls, not boys.
It all seemed very sci-fi and dystopian at the time--not to mention full of anger and utterly joyless. It also turns out to have been prophetic.
Yes, Harrington traces the origins of some of this stuff in the book really well.
UN: “Interventions aimed at influencing fertility rates are never the answer"
UN: "contraception and abortion are basic human rights"
So according to the UN and NGO-ocracy (Mary's term) apparently intervening to lower fertility rates is a human right, but trying to raise them is an assault on human rights.
"Learning that the official global position is now that even extinction would be preferable to any possible discouragement of infinite autonomy, some of us can’t help but wonder if, somewhere along the line, liberal feminism might have gone a bit off the rails…"
I practically fell out of my chair on this line. This may be the funniest thing I've ever read here, and there have been lots of good ones.
For those who are interested in more Mary:
https://michaelnayna.substack.com/p/mary-harrington-in-the-cyborg-theocracy
Like yours N.S., this interview is very good, but this one is on camera, and Mary is very expressive by nature.
If your library has a means to "suggest a purchase", I would suggest we all use it to request Mary's book. I just requested it at mine.
Yes Mary is an exceptionally good speaker and conversationalist, even on camera. I'm always blown away.
The line I find most disturbing in that video interview of Mary is her summary of queer theory: "queer theory is the idea that there should be no norms to how we are or how we exist in the world"
It is only in modern times that "human" has been inclusive of all of homo sapiens. However, with no norms about what is unique to human biology or behavior, that inclusive definition will well be up for grabs sooner instead of later. Forget "what is a woman?" The critical question is "what is a human?" If "biological human female" is no longer sufficient to define "woman", why should we have any confidence that "member of homo sapiens" will remain sufficient to define "human"?
American progressives already insist that blacks who hold "incorrect" political views aren't really black. The embrace of euthanasia indicates that at least some homo sapiens are no viewed as fully human. Combining these two logical positions does not take you anywhere good.
Having now watched Parts One and Two of Mary Harrington's interview on Michael Nayna's The Process, I'm reminded of an excellent book "The Meaning of Hitler" by Sebastian Hafner, which is the most insightful critique of Hitler's rise to power.
Hafner writes that Hitler's success was the result of the fact he was a reckless nihilist at a time when seemingly powerful German institutions were demoralized, rotten and discredited. Hitler attacked seemingly invincible domestic adversaries and they immediately collapsed, which shocked the world and made Germans and many others think there was some positive value to Hitler's program, which--of course--there was not. He was nothing but a destroyer.
We are in a similar time when barbarians are being promoted by our ruling class into a desert of leaderless corruption and a pervasive sense of meaninglessness.
I was in university in the late 70s / early 80s and was told by professors that there was no such thing as human nature. My study of poetry over millennia convinced me they were lying, but more importantly, society was healthier back then--even though under stress--and ordinary people and the leaders of most civilized countries didn't need such esoteric proof to know that human nature is real and it's important to act accordingly.
The last two minutes of Part Two when Mary posits a positive program are touching and sad. The rot is already so far advanced--it happened in our parent's generation in the guise of prosperity, sexual liberation, Boomer narcissism and (what was then called) radical feminism and is now government policy across the OECD. As Mary suggests, most people in their 30s and 40s were not raised by a loving married couple who were mutually affectionate and respectful. It's a struggle for them to re-invent the model for themselves without personal examples to guide them.
I pray they succeed--the alternative is for us to await the appearance of the Beast.
Maybe, just maybe those zany Catholics who spoke of the corrosive effects of contraception were right all along... Maybe the amount of fun you get to have by abandoning long-time norms is short-lived, and followed by greater misery—even an existential crisis?
My thoughts reading this book is “wow she sounds so Catholic!” If people really delve deep into works such as JPII theology of the body, she lines up pretty closely with those doctrines.
For those interested in other authors who write in this space, I recommend Carl Truman’s The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, Edith Stein’s Woman, and Abigail Fatale’s The Genius of Gender.
I haven't read it yet, but I've heard good things about The Case Against the Sexual Revolution by Louise Perry.
I enjoyed Mary Harington’s book a lot, in particular the parts about pre-industrial relations between the sexes. I feel like I’ve actually seen something like this with my own eyes.
I live and work in northern Vietnam, my wife is Vietnamese and comes from a town halfway between Hanoi and the Chinese border. We regularly make trips back to visit the farm where she grew up. It always feel like I’m travelling back in time, not decades but centuries. I’ve had plenty of opportunity to observe village life in rural Vietnam.
My brother and sister in law run a ‘subsistence household’ like the one Harington talks about. Actually the Mr has recently left the land to work in a factory close to the city. I see the way the work is divided, and there is a strong sense of solidarity. Yes, women sit apart from men at large gathering and are largely tasked with the cooking, which to some would seem a terrible situation. But I’ve never experienced anything but joy on those occasions, lots of laughter, lots of rice wine.
I’m not saying this is an ideal situation - the people in this community are poor, but there is something about the sureness of footing that makes life in the countryside here, and I’ve spent a while thinking of the word, merrier.
They know nothing of meat lego and our rapid descent into nihilism, except perhaps the younger generations on TikTok. I thought it was interested how NS Lyons finished this article and I have to agree: as scarcity have forged these tight communities here, what will be our scarcity?
this essay made me think of the current Trans/gender/cyborg ideology as being a reaction to the feminine.
for instance, a natal male wants to embrace femininity in their transition, whereas most natal girls seek to negate the feminine thru their transition.
but both are either a celebration or rejection of femininity. where is the masculine in this scenario?
we aren’t seeing the FtM running around afterward like libertine gay men y’know...
I think a certain amount of 'real feminism has never been tried' is justified, even if only as a way to make the book legible to people used to thinking in the terms that currently predominate - let's be honest, 'Embodied Reactionaries Against Cyborg Theocracy' is unlikely to shift many copies. But you're right that it leaves a gap in the market for a book that addresses the same argument to men. As you've identified for a while, currently only Bronze Age Mindset does anything of the sort.
Also arguably The Way of Men
Lyons, I suspect, knows without a Judeo-Christian weltanschauung, this reactionary project is doomed. Technology has made us rich. We serve mammon. We hate our old master. We aren't going to give up the benefits of technology. No one is going to embrace poverty and the 'natural,' except Ted Kaczinski types. We are addicts to the power and convenience the experimental method has tempted us with; we are tempted by the secret knowledge about matter, we can't unlearn technology. It's not markets, per se, it's what markets offer to sell. We want it. Cognitively rejecting what medical technology has become, I understand. Abandoning medicine so you can trust in God and Nature isn't going to happen. So, who is going to remake medical technology into a humble servant of the living God? Who? We the people would find it intolerable. Face it, we are doomed. Mankind is committing suicide. "O, Brave New World"
Kinda gloomy but likely correct.
My comment is a little cryptic and it wanders off-topic w/out letting on. Our global economy is utterly dependent on electricity to operate. The global electrical grid is utterly vulnerable to being completely destroyed by a massive Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). Trillions of tons of charged particles, plasma, are routinely ejected from the sun. We have never shielded the grid to protect it. Earth's magnetosphere induces these particles into conductors and the irregular spikes in amps and volts destroys the transformers and other attachments when the CME event is of sufficient size.
There is indisputable scientific/historical evidence these massive CMEs frequently hit the earth, like every two to five hundred years. In the grid era, there have been three, very destructive CMEs since 1859.
The article talks about how cognitively entangled our minds are with technology. It is nothing compared to how physically dependent we are on the grid to live. There is no going back to familial economies of scale. We are going to have a CME event that will turn the lights out on the grid. Globally, nothing will work. The pumps won't pump water, or fuel. The internet will go dark. The infrastructure to repair the grid will be without power too. The stores will be dark and empty. Global.
Our dependency on our unnatural, man made, economy is complete. In the past we would have seen ominous auroras is tropical latitudes and that would be the end of it. Imagine what a pickle we would be in if everything quit working?
In a way, the insanity of feminism is a symptom of the real insanity of imagining we can sustain our dependence on technology. We can't. We are going to be destroyed by our belief in technology. It is not really suicide. But we are doing it to ourselves.
Ted Kaczinski was an evil man. But he was right about technology destroying us.
Let me offer an anecdote. One hundred years ago, if you wanted milk, cream, butter. You had to live in close proximity to cows. Now, for efficiency dairies are scaled up to milk thousands of thousands of cows in a single location. All the processes on the dairy are dependent on the electrical grid. If the grid goes down, you can't feed the cows, water the cows, milk the cows, refrigerate the milk, pasteurize the milk, bottle the milk, transport the milk. With the current expansion of GPS fencing, soon you won't even be able to confine the cows.
My scenario of a CME (solar flare) collapsing the grid is not controversial. It's more or less inevitable in the next couple, three hundred years. Perhaps very much sooner. Our economy can't simply adjust. Food shelter and water will not be distributed. Urban housing is unlivable outside of the tropics without electricity. (it's merely miserable in the tropics) How do you suppress fire without water?
I'm no prepper. Technology dominates my life as much as yours. Feminism is an economic impulse driven the technologies that emerge from the applied experimental method. It has no place in the economies that predate the modern era. In short, it's always been a ideological, unnatural idea.
Families are natural, economic, hierarchical, and inherently unequal. The family can always survive, the current technological economy can not.
The problem is the windings in the transformers. And the fuel for generation. The VLTs (Very Large Transformers) in generating stations take years to build. Each one is more or less unique. There are only six facilities in the world that make them. If all the VLTs melt down - well I don't know what you do. The generating stations can't transmit electricity to the substations, where all the transformers have been fried. The substations can't distribute electricity, but if they xould, you couldn't use it because all the distribution transformers have been ruined and are inoperable. Not talking about a doomsday fantasy, this is a highly probable event that will occur sooner rather than later.
Only a fool would bet against it. Totally different than AGW caused by increasing levels of atmospheric CO2. That is not happening
Biblical Christian here. We are in a “post-Christian” culture and floundering badly. Perhaps a better book to explore and hand to young and old is the Bible.
I believe you are correct, jack, but there are lots of people who are unwilling to respond to God, but might be willing to take a step in His direction via a dissenting progressive feminist like Mary Harrington.
The steps to conversion are often many and small. I'll take any book that moves people in the right direction.
Somehow or other, people have to get a clue.
Great point!! All truth is Gods truth!!
The Seven Story Mountain by Thomas Merton charts his conversation from indifferent atheist to a monk. When it was published, it met with great interest and he became a spokesperson for the religious life and a critic of modern society. The book is all but forgotten now and, I have to wonder, if it would even be published today.
Is it possible feminism achieved all their goals, is now struggling for relevance, is bent on self preservation as an industry, and so has gone in search of new grails? So, having largely fixed societal inequities, it becomes the injustice of childbirth that they fight: noble souls.
As our author explains in his military industrial complex piece, people desperately want their lives to be meaningful, to be a hero in one’s own story, and fighting injustices – it’s exciting and self affirming. You by comparison are ignoble.
My take: life has an equilibrium, relax. Their mutilation of their own children will play out in the most disastrous possible ways. A short 10 years from now, when these little Frankenstein‘s are committing suicide and depressed and disgusting, this terrible tragedy will be seen as a mania. Give them all the rope they need. It is their children that they destroy; shameful and stupid, discordant with nature, my advice, luxuriate in the schadenfreude.
As Heath Ledger’s joker asked: “why so serious”.
You underestimate the malicious greed of the thing that is running this hell-show. Mutilated children are victims of abuse no matter whose they are - there can be no schadenfreude for them. But it's not just the children of zealots who are caught up in the trans movement. Already several jurisdictions have taken children away from their non-consenting parents in the name of progress. Schools in many places are able to initiate the transitioning process without notifying parents. Here in one state of Australia parents are already banned by law from doing anything other than wholeheartedly affirm a child who expresses the vaguest interest in the gender blob. If you care about the children you know you should understand that this directly threatens them and so much more besides.
Yes, there is a kind of systemic greed of the administrative state in this regard. (The term "nanny state" may take on an extra dimension if you're familiar with the babysitter-horror film genre; cf. "The Omen," "The Hand that Rocks the Cradle," et al). Blob seeks to expand and consolidate, including by creating and absorbing little blobs, er, Meat Legos.
There is also a very literal greed behind the medical industry's rapid and near-total plunge forward into gender blob theology and procedure. As with the opioid pusher craze, I am convinced—as are, I'm sure, most readers here—that ten or twenty years hence, we will see an awful lot of lawsuits and finger-pointing and heart-rending docudramas on Netflix, or ChatGPTV, about how some evil wizards ruthlessly exploited the poor children of today.
...Hansel and Gretel an old story about the 'devouring mother'.
Very well said, and you’re clearly a good person. As for me, I used to be, now, not so much. I ask: why so serious!
There's a reason why some activities are age restricted. Adults who made the laws understood that 18 (at a minimum) should be the age you could sign up for military service, drink, consent to sex (yes, I know some states it's lower), get married. It's to protect children who aren't grown up enough mentally or emotionally to make good decisions. A line has to be drawn somewhere and that line is being erased. Decades ago Patrick Moynihan wrote an essay, Defining Deviancy Down, and he was right. In the essay he observed, as more activities that had been defined as abnormal were included within the bounds of normal, the very definition of deviancy expanded to include them -- perfect example: Sam Briton flaunting his activities and proclivities and, until he was caught red-handed with theft, celebrated by the progressives.
Oh my God we sound like the moral majority! That’s not good, but I must say I agree with you 100%
I find it criminal and so feel some moral compunction to stand against it. I do agree it is a mania.
I think that if society had pursued transgenderism in a measured way (if there is such a thing), then perhaps the "myth of progress" could have continued on for most. However, the novel surgeries and medical treatments will surely cause the next generation to react so strongly that this "progress" cannot last.
On the flip side, perhaps the next generation will pursue full emancipation from the body in reaction to the trauma - just as our tech billionaires planned all along.
the destination of this train (post-Locke and certainly post-Mill) has always been "full emancipation from the body". Liberalism is about liberating people from unchosen constraints, and the body itself is the ultimate unchosen constraint.
I think they will insist on the continuation of “the myth of progress.” Any acknowledgment of the Frankenstein horrors will simply be accepted as pioneering necessities.
Well said. If you’re in the mood, how about describing the billionaires plan.
I think Lyons has described the more insidious aspects of it in his piece on the "Abolition of Man" - but I think the move is toward full virtual reality. Perhaps "The Matrix" or "Ready Player One" serve as different flavors of what some billionaires want. I believe Zuckerberg already revealed his plans and is betting on full virtual reality winning the day.
Lyons is extraordinarily!
Full shariah, that’s funny.
The argument that pre-industrial women lived much more biologically and socially authentic lives, and that modernity and birth control have broken the ancient and precious rhythms of childbirth and care, casting women down into a desperate spiral, chasing after the chimera of “equal rights” seems very odd to me.
And criticism that the birth control pill is “a “medicine” taken not to cure something that had gone awry with the natural functions of the human body, but to “improve” on the body by deliberately changing how it naturally functions.” is an even odder statement.
In pre-modern, pre-birth control times, women would give birth to as many children as possible before they (often) died from the process. They then found themselves as care givers to huge families of 10 or more children, and all the back breaking labor that would have gone with that. I find it very hard to see this kind of life as some kind of deeply fulling existence, filled with “regular community and charitable involvement, romance and sex.” as you suggest.
Moreover, criticizing birth control pills as “a “medicine” taken not to cure something that had gone awry with the natural functions of the human body, but to “improve” on the body by deliberately changing how it naturally functions” seems to miss the fact that most modern medicine does that. My cholesterol, blood pressure, arthritis, acid reflux are all natural functions of my body, a body which evolution would have ending its life at about age 35. The medication that I take for all of those conditions keep me alive and healthy by treating those perfectly natural conditions.
I am not surprised that we are led from these ideas to the “horrors” of the transgender movement, complete with a graphic description of severed breasts and surgically manufactured penises. UCLA studies tell us that less than 1% of Americans identify as transgender, yet that does not stop the conservative bullshit machine from grinding out unrelenting outrage over anything associated with this subject. Are there really no greater dangers to our society in today’s fraught world than whether or not a trans person uses a particular bathroom? Can we not give it a rest?
Conservative intellectuals and commentators seem prone to bending history and facts to match their ideological viewpoint, especially to explain why things that irritate them continue to be so popular. I am not suggesting that feminism hasn’t had its downside, or that the extreme ideologies of the feminist left are not irritating sometimes, but we can still try to hold on to basic common sense in an ideological debate.
The idea that principles actually matter is absolutely central to conservatism (or any coherent philosophy for that matter). It should be obvious by now, certainly if you're reading my work, that the debate over trans is about fundamental principles, including what it means to be human and how we constitute reality and truth. Altering the answer to something that fundamental will inevitably go on to structure our whole society and all its norms and morals, including the value of human life. So arguably no, there is nothing more important - certainly not things as mundane as tax rates or whatever, which are in comparison of almost no comparative importance to our civilization and collective future. The "outrage " exists on this issue because it is, a bit like slavery was, an issue of totally existential disagreement. There is no machine required to produce it, and no one is going to calm down about it anytime soon.
On medicine: the difference is that if you take a pill to relieve arthritis, say, you are returning the body to its normal functional operating equilibrium; if you take a birth control pill you are changing its normal equilibrium.
I did not say pre-industrial life was 'filled with “regular community and charitable involvement, romance and sex”,' but that (summarizing Harrington) these aspects of life were marketized post-industrialization. She details this extensively.
With respect (and I appreciate your thoughtful answer) the assignment of the subject of transgender men and women as a matter defining what it means to be human, or how we constitute reality and truth or that it will inevitably go on to structure our whole society and all its norms and morals, including the value of human life, is your own intellectual construct. It would hardly be considered some kind of universal truth by most people, though it may to you or to like minded thinkers.
In my view, this view is just an extension of the deep discomfort that many conservative people feel about homosexuality, another subject the rage machinery cannot leave alone, and another subject that some might see as simple bigotry. By elevating the subject of transgender people to the kind of existential importance that you do, you remove it from common sense or logical discussion. There are all kinds of social deviation in the world, but this one in particular seems to drive the right crazy (also because the subject has been cynically used to whip up outrage on the right for political reasons.)
As to whether or not my cholesterol level or arthritis medication is “returning my body to its normal operating equilibrium”, you are quite wrong. My body, in its normal operating equilibrium would be wracked with all kinds of problems that the medication treats and I would die in my 30’s. This medication is allowing me to deviate from my normal operating equilibrium and live a longer and better life.
I could choose, if I wanted, to just die of heart disease or live a life of continual arthritis pain (conditions which come from my age, my natural equilibrium). A woman can choose to have a child or not, as I choose whether to die of heart disease or not. I wonder by what authority you determine yourself to be the judge of what the normal operating equilibrium of a woman is?
I understand that this was a book review and not an essay, but your opinions, functional and philosophical, seem clear, at least to me. Thanks for responding to my post.
Robert Gardner: it is bigger than you say, and we are not merely fearful bigots and intolerant moralists.
“ the gathering darkness of totalitarianism that we face seems to be nothing less than a Faustian effort to deconstruct everything it means to be human” NS Lyons.
We are in the midst of a societal mania against any imposed pattern, of which the transgender movement is but one small component. We are being consumed by a sick and dangerous Gnostic religion that will lead us to ruin. Your prevarication about common sense combined with your belief that we are simply close minded bigots is incorrect.
As usual, Marshall McLuhan offers sage advice:
“ The aspiration of our time for wholeness, empathy, and depth of awareness is a natural adjunct of electric technology.... (the extending our central nervous system to envelop the world).....the mark of our times is it’s revulsion against impose patterns...... we are suddenly eager to have things and people express their beings totally. There is a deep faith to be had in this new attitude - a faith that concerns the ultimate harmony of all being.
“It’s gnosticism all the way down”: the trans movement is a misguided religious crusade and yes gender dysphoria is real. We are in grave danger.
“The gathering darkness of totalitarianism”? This kind of over-blown rhetoric is a hall mark of the conservative intellectual seeking philosophical legitimacy for one cherished gripe or another. “The world is ending, so listen to me….” We have plenty of things to be worried about. Our civilization is actually in peril. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of our current political and philosophical division, is that we cannot agree about what the genuine perils are. How you transform the trans movement (whatever that is) into a religious crusade, I cannot imagine. And how you translate that fear into a great danger is a mystery to me. We have real dangers in our society, the steep degradation of our democracy, the normalization of mass shootings, the almost total corporatization of our media, the ruination of our healthcare system. Some healthy curiosity about the nature of bigotry would be in order, when frothing at the mouth over LGBTQ conspiracy theories.
Please forgive my trespass.
You know, I really tried to read that link but it made almost no sense to me and I don't see the relevence. That kind of thing is what it is. What it has to do with the suggestion that the right's discomfort with the subject has a basis in bigotry went right passed me.
UCLA studies are not current. I have a teenager. In a very, very red/conservative state. There are at a minimum three friends in her circle who “identify” as transgender, and one who has gone far enough to get started on medical transition before the state outlawed it. This is not minor and we are not angry enough about what’s happening to kids. If it were the tiny fraction of transgender people out living their life as they have for the last few decades, we would not be talking about this. But I am not overstating the fact that they are aggressively coming for the kids. I can’t be made to deny what I’m seeing with my own eyes.
"They are aggressively coming for the kids"? Do you have any idea how that sounds? Who is coming for the kids, specifically, and how are they doing it? Have you considered how adolescent girls, when faced with the prospect of being judged by every boy in the school on their sexual rating, might send out signals that they are playing for the other team? Might even believe it? Have you considered that there might be another narrative here, other motivations?
Who is coming for the kids, specifically?
Well if you live in a blue state (or Canada), the State is coming for them.
Pretty much every blue state (and Canada) has passed laws proclaiming that parents can and will lose custody of their children if they fail to "affirm" their child's gender identity and approve "gender affirming care", which means puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and genital mutilations and radical double masectomies. (There are several hundred radical double masectomies performed each year on minors in the US with a diagnosis of "gender dysphoria", per a Reuters analysi of insurance claims: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-transyouth-data)
Minnesota and Washington are the two most recent states to have passed such laws: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/washington-minnesota-become-transgender-and-abortion-sanctuaries
If my kids weren't grown, I would be fleeing California for a red state.
There are 330 million people in the United States. The Reuters article you reference says “A small but increasing number of U.S. children diagnosed with gender dysphoria are choosing medical interventions to express their identity and help alleviate their distress.” The operative word here is “small”. There are many reasons gender dysphoria might be showing up in children and neither of us are professionally qualified to determine why that actually is. Maybe it is the result of profound upheavals in our society as a result of accelerating change driven by technology. Maybe it is the result of a mysterious cabal of corporate elites working behind closed doors, to control the media in order to drive our civilization into the arms of Satan. But whatever it is, the numbers are vanishingly small, compared to other public health issues facing children (like gun violence). Regarding blue-state laws, the PBS.org article you reference says these laws are “to enact safeguards against bans or limits on transgender and abortion healthcare in Republican states.” That is, they are in reaction to the draconian laws being passed which discriminate against LGBQ people or limit abortion.
Read the actual laws. They do what I say they do, remove parental rights to determine their kids health care.
As for "vanishingly small" numbers:
>The Komodo analysis of insurance claims found 56 genital surgeries among patients ages 13 to 17 with a prior gender dysphoria diagnosis from 2019 to 2021.
>Among teens, “top surgery” to remove breasts is more common. In the three years ending in 2021, at least 776 mastectomies were performed in the United States on patients ages 13 to 17 with a gender dysphoria diagnosis, according to Komodo’s data analysis of insurance claims. This tally does not include procedures that were paid for out of pocket.
>At least 14,726 minors started hormone treatment with a prior gender dysphoria diagnosis from 2017 through 2021, according to the Komodo analysis.
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-transyouth-data/
But if you want to say these numbers are "vanishingly rare", fine. Then you should have no objection to laws banning these procedures on minors, since they already happen so rarely as not to even matter. You agree with that, don't you?
It is clearly important for you to make this issue one of huge importance. Let’s consider, for instance, that suicide is the second-leading cause of death among people age 15 to 24 in the U.S. Nearly 20% of high school students report serious thoughts of suicide and 9% have made an attempt to take their lives, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (re UCLA Health). Those are serious numbers. And of course gun violence is the number one cause of death in children. So in this context, 56 genital surgeries, in a country of 130,000,000 people doesn’t seem as comparatively important to me, especially since I don’t know anything about the individual cases at all. These are serious surgeries, and not to be ignored, but it is not rational to elevate them to national crisis status.
I am not saying that these health/gender issues are not serious, and that parents and I think people generally should treat the subject with weight. It is the near hysteria that the subject draws from the right, suggestions of all kinds of diabolical conspiracies and world ending dangers that I am objecting to. But I am afraid that we are talking at cross purposes here, that neither of us will convince the other of his point of view. But thanks for responding.
I know exactly how that sounds. I wish it weren’t true, but it is. And it’s not just teenagers, although that world has descended into bizarre madness that I really cannot describe if you refuse to recognize how insane it really is. But it’s worse than that. It’s animated programs and illustrated picture books aimed at small children promoting gender ideology. It’s in Disney programming and on YouTube Kids. My 8yo has a kid in his class who says he’s not sure if he’s a boy or a girl. It’s coordinated and it’s everywhere. If I didn’t HAVE to be aware of where it’s all coming from because I have kids, I would think it sounds crazy, too. I assure you, it’s not.
Here is what is crazy: It is very well established that American children are in danger for their lives due to the proliferation of guns in America. Guns are now the number one cause of death in children. And yet, rather than a rational movement towards gun control on the right, we see this over-blown and hysterical reaction to something that is actually hard to define, the homosexual agenda or the transgender phenomenon or whatever you might call it. You believe it is being “coordinated” and that it is “everywhere”. Who in the world would be coordinating it, and why would they? This is not a rational position. I know that many people are deeply uncomfortable with homosexuality for various reasons, and that transgender people seem to be some kind of unsettling deviation from the norm. Just because you are uncomfortable with something in the society does not make it a world-threatening crisis. And if you are uncomfortable with something, it may cause you to be hypersensitive to it, making you think you see it everywhere, but that does not mean it is actually saturating the culture. If you are genuinely worried about your children and children generally, you energy would be much better spent campaigning for gun control.
Not sure this is worth arguing. You are clearly concerned with guns and don’t seem to actually have children. And you seem stuck in a previous decade. Must be kind of nice, actually.
But you are right about one thing, there is nothing rational about it. Nothing. Which makes it worse. And again, I can’t deny what I see with my own eyes. This is not garbage I read on twitter or even substack. I don’t take veiled accusations of homophobia lightly. But until you watch someone you care about go from just being a happy gay person to being sucked into this perverse gender cult and see them literally undergo butcherous surgeries to affirm what is essentially a fantasy, I’m not sure you should be calling this overblown or hysterical.
Sure, if you define 19yo gangbangers as children, as the CDC does.
Many of your ailments would not be a problem without the modern processed food diet. And many of todays medications cause side effects that in turn cause many other ailments. Example is a loved one’s diagnosis of CIDP which was treated with immunosuppression which caused the immune system to not control cancer cells which rapidly became the main health problem. It is huge hubris to believe medicine has all the answers. Much of our longevity is because of modern sewage treatment and clean water
The progressive cult promises that we can all become Nietzschean Ubermensch, and since this is obviously impossible, we have the confusion and nihilism of today along the desire to keep doubling down looking for more “rights” and the use of technology to gain them.
Unselfishness and sacrifice have gone "out" for everyone, not just women. Men (no! NOT ALL men) abandon their families with as much abandon as women (no! NOT ALL women) decline to have them. As you go on to say, "there is nothing sex-specific about it."
Her book is really just so good. I recommend it to all.
"The fullest expression of the War on Nature and the complete sanctification of “rights and choices” today is without doubt the transgender movement "
SO FAR. Furries haven't gone mainstream yet and there is probably a further move to be made in the cyborg realm. Not to mention something cannot even be imagined yet.