Counter-Currents
Gavin McInnes: mug shot of a thought criminal
1,200 words
I never had a chance to read Gavin McInnes’ article “Transphobia is Perfectly Natural,” since Thought Catalog has taken it down. (But we can read outraged reactions from around the web.) McInnes has apparently been hounded out of his job as chief creative officer of something called Rooster, which I am too unhip to have heard of.
I am sure McInnes’ article is somewhere out there on the web, and I am sure someone will send it to me eventually. But I don’t want to read it until I have written my own take on the subject matter. Frankly, I am jealous that McInnes wrote on this first, since I have been kicking a similar idea around for years. I did not write it out, because up until May of this year, I was living in San Francisco, and the trannies there are far scarier than the antifa. Like the lesbians of Berkeley, they can reduce a man to a skeleton in under 30 seconds.
“Transphobia,” like “homophobia,” is an inherently dishonest term. “Phobia” derives from the Greek “phobos” or fear, and phobias are by definition irrational fears. But transphobia is neither irrational nor a fear. It is an emotion, of course. But it is a completely natural, normal, and healthy emotion. Which is as rational as any emotion gets.
Specifically, transphobia is a perfectly natural feeling of revulsion at men who have their dicks chopped off and women who have their tits chopped off — among many, many other things — in order to “change their sex.” Of course, one’s sex is determined by one’s chromosomes, so “sex changes” do not change anyone’s sex. They merely transform a man into a butchered simulacrum of a woman, or a woman into a butchered simulacrum of a man.
Again: sex-changes are futile, because one cannot change one’s chromosomes. One can only butcher and drug one’s body to look like someone of the opposite sex. And when many transsexuals finally awaken to the horror and futility of what they have done, they kill themselves.
The revulsion I feel toward transsexuals is not based on “meanness” or “ignorance” as liberals would have it, but on sympathy. When a healthy person sees another in pain, he recoils in horror because he feels the pain of others (which is the literal meaning of sympathy — suffering with others). I love my penis, and the thought of losing it fills me with horror. And when one sees self-inflicted suffering, it is natural to feel loathing and anger as well, because it didn’t have to happen. And by hurting themselves, self-mutilators hurt the rest of us as well. I am a bit overly sensitive, perhaps, but I even cringe at the sight of tattoos, partly in pity, partly in revulsion.
The kind of people who don’t feel sympathy and horror at radical forms of self-mutilation are, frankly, sick. They lack elementary sympathy for the pain of others. They may even take pleasure in the pain of others. Or, like most liberals who champion trannies as the next great minority crusade, they take pleasure in the discomfort that sexual mutilation causes “those people” — conservatives, Christians, rednecks, hicks, etc. — the hated others of the liberal loveys. Trannies and other freaks are just tools in the culture war. But in this case, the enemy is not the Right side of the culture, but nature herself — mental and moral health, which apparently drives today’s Left to paroxysms of sadistic rage. Because they’re evil, of course.
After a healthy person feels sympathy-based revulsion at sexual self-mutilation, the first thought that pops into his mind is, “These people must be crazy.” But let’s just withhold judgment for a bit and ask the transsexuals themselves what they think. Interestingly enough, they too claim to suffer from mental illness, namely the feeling of being a man trapped in a woman’s body, or vice versa. So the real issue here is not whether these poor people suffer from a mental illness — they admit it themselves — but rather what sort of treatment they should seek. Self-mutilation is not the cure for mental illness, but just another symptom.
If a man thinks he is Jesus, we do not crucify him. If a man thinks he is Napoleon, we do not crown him emperor. If a man thinks he is a woman, why then should we go along with it? Shouldn’t we try to help him get over his desire to mutilate himself, just as we help anorexics to stop starving themselves, and cutters to stop carving themselves?
And since when is it consistent with the Hippocratic oath — the “First, Do No Harm” part — for doctors to mutilate healthy bodies and turn them into parodies of the opposite sex?
What would I do with transsexuals? First of all, let me say that I have actually known two people who have embarked upon this path. To all appearances they were good-looking heterosexual men who dropped out of sight and then re-emerged as not-so-good-looking women. But all their likable traits and shared interests were disconcertingly intact. So transsexuals are not some abstract other. They are very real to me. This is me being real: having a real reaction to real people undergoing real, drastic transformations. I feel compassion and revulsion toward the transsexuals themselves, and righteous indignation toward the people who enable and exploit them.
So what would my policy be?
First, I would simply say “No.” Every decent society should provide healthcare for the mentally and physically ill. When people are mentally ill, they cannot make responsible decisions for themselves. Thus a decent society needs to exercise paternalism in the interests of the mentally ill. And the primary interest of the mentally ill is to get better, to triumph over their delusions, not to be humored in them, much less aided in radical and futile forms of self-mutilation. Again, self-mutilation is a symptom of mental illness, not a cure. Compassion and responsibility require that we simply say “no.”
Second, the mutilation of healthy bodies is contrary to the proper aim of the medical profession. Thus every doctor who performs sex change operations should be stripped of his license and drummed out of the profession. Sex changes should be outlawed, and any doctor who performs them should be jailed. Indeed, the same treatment should be meted out to doctors who perform any and all forms of genital mutilation.
Third, we must keep a sense of perspective. I don’t hate transsexuals. (I am rather proud of my book Confessions of a Reluctant Hater, so if I did hate them, I would have no problem admitting it.) Transsexuals aren’t evil or threatening. They are not “sinners.” They are simply sick people who should be cared for, not hated or harmed.
The truly evil people are those who exploit these unfortunates for gain: the doctors who mutilate them for money and the Leftists who use them as the latest totems of diversity, progress, and enlightenment — thereby revealing that their true enemy is not injustice or inequality but nature, health, and sanity. Craziest of all, though, is a society that consents to be ruled by such monsters.
47 comments
oh, come one…who among us hasn’t felt the urge to don a baby-doll negligee?
No, can’t say that I have.
There but for the grace of God, huh?
That really does insinuate a false equality.
GREAT ARTICLE!
There’s a Swedish documentary called “Ångrarna” (The Regretters) and it’s about two men who felt that they were women trapped in a mans body. Then they regretted the transformation. Here it is with English subtitles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEEENL4SX-Y
Thanks for this.
I and some friends have been saying the same thing for the last years. Excellent short article.
Thanks
Mutilation is an emotive word, re-modelling less so. One makes the cut between oneself and nature wherever one likes. One should pay for the operation oneself though; pathology pathologises in all directions.
Re-modelling is a dishonest euphemism. Cutting off your dick is not re-modelling. Re-modelling is something you do to a kitchen.
Good article! I have been meaning to write something about this subject myself. It is part of the all-important (from a racial and cultural perspective) “sexual revolution,” which is by no means restricted to feminism alone. Instead, it encompasses everything along what I have come to think of as the “reproductive boundary.” Its effects on race and reproduction are every bit as sweeping, harmful, and anti-humanitarian as the French and Communist revolutions were in their ways.
The problem is, everything happens in the dark, beneath the radar, and along so many different fronts simultaneously that you don’t even know or understand what’s happened until it’s a fait accompli.
I believe I read somewhere that there are something like 25 different transgender permutations and combinations. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but WTF? Everything now is a goddamned research project.
“I believe I read somewhere that there are something like 25 different transgender permutations and combinations. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but WTF? Everything now is a goddamned research project.”
Hesse in the “Treatise on the Steppenwolf” gently mocked the Western notion of “two souls within my breast” (Faust) as naive, since the Hindus acknowledged thousands. In the Hindu tradition, such ranges of variation are recognized “as a biological fact, given the necessity for all the intermediate degrees between masculine and feminine….” [4]
Even on a “principial” level, Daniélou pointed out that if there are two basic principles, light and dark, male and female, etc., then rather than reducing everything to one or the other, there must be many “resultant intermediate states.” This is fully accounted for in Aryan mythology. Shiva, for example, is not merely paired with Shakti, but manifests in many forms, some bisexual or hermaphroditic, which are the subject of numerous homosexual cults. [5]
Such is the view of all integral Traditions. Need I point out that it is the degenerate Judaic pseudo-tradition that fetishizes duality — Jew/goy, kosher/traif, wool/silk, etc,, and sets out to “tikkun olam”, to “correct” creation (yes, the Talmudic rabbis challenge the Creator!) by eliminating all such “sinful” mixtures.
4. India: A Civilization of Differences, Inner Traditions, 2003, p. 11.
5. See Virtue, Success, Pleasure & Liberation: The Four Aims of Life in the Tradition of Ancient India, Inner Traditions, 1993, pp. 95-96
@Greg
I’ve also not heard of Rooster and I’m probably a lot younger than you. This makes me doubly un-hip. Great post, my sentiments exactly.
Not everyone likes dicks–even on’s own. The point being, Greg, that it is one’s own dick to cut off if one so chooses. If that offends your own aesthetic then you are entitled to say so; but that does not make your views on mental health anything other than questionable.
You’re a libertarian, and I’m not. You take people’s preferences as unquestionable and think they should be free to act upon them. I think some preferences are healthy, but others are immature or sick, and acting on them should be paternalistically prohibited. One can’t completely prevent self-mutilation, just as one cannot prevent suicide. But one can certainly ban doctors for mutilating patients (or helping them kill themselves, for that matter). And one can take attempts at self-mutilation, like attempts at suicide, as cries for help and occasions for involuntary therapeutic commitment.
What about the idea that the brain can be feminized in utero, but not the body? Thus a man might be naturally attracted to the feminine side by his own neural wiring. Or vice versa: one study I read about said that girls who had a fraternal twin often have higher levels of testosterone than other girls.
https://web.archive.org/web/20140813220429/http://thoughtcatalog.com/gavin-mcinnes/2014/08/transphobia-is-perfectly-natural/
Thanks, Wayback Machine!
At the end of the day, Trannies are nothing more than overgrown children pitching collective fit over anyone refusing to join their game of make believe.
Oh well.
Stamp you feet and hold your breath all you want, I’m still not playing .
I am so old I remember when they were called eunuchs.
And they were unique!
I have never heard a rational, high-brow argument in favor of sex-change. I assume one is out there (what’s the line of the medical establishment?) but I’ve never heard it.
Transexualism really pushes beyond the spontaneous instincts of people – “disgusting!” – to the limit. If they can make this seem normal, that really only leaves pedophilia.
And already in France, it is far more respectable to be an avowed pedophile than a suspected anti-Semite. Thierry Lévy, Frédéric Mitterrand and Daniel Cohn-Bendit have all more or less admitted they are pedophiles, but for some reason the media is still happy to give them coverage, whereas Alain Soral and Dieudonné are personae non gratae, to not say demonic monsters.
Some feminists ironically oppose transexualism on the basis that by going to such extreme measures to mold your body in the image of the opposite sex based on the feeling that, say, you are “a man born into a woman’s body”, you are admitting that the souls of men and women differ in fundamental ways (which is treason, of course!). True in theory, but transexuals rarely end up settling into traditional gender roles, and gender confusion in many cases does not have a biological basis. Mostly it is natural result of the destruction of traditional values. I have known a girl who “transitioned” into a boy; to my sense, she was just deeply confused, hurt, and alone. Like many of us in this age, unfortunately, man and woman alike. Her blasé, boyish exterior masked a great void. I believe the desire to mutilate her body was borne out of this. There is a self-destructive element to Leftist psychology…
I have also heard some feminists wail that female-to-male transexuals have “internalized misogyny” and that male-to-female transexuals are “impostors.” Then other feminists (the majority) whine about “transphobia in the feminist community” in the Huffington Post. Strange times we live in.
When Dresden was 5 she wanted to become a horse. She would nicker and run around loping. She even tried to eat some grain. We eventually bought her a pony and now she rides a horse.
I see they are now allowing children as young as 5 or 6 to start the process of changing their sex. I wonder if eventually they will also allow species transitions?
I think that Dresden is happy now that we didnt allow her to change into a horse.
Paternalists!
I read the article and expressed my support for McInnes in the comment section. Trolling, yes, and also looking for a rational explanation on why people are defending this. I pointed out the similar things Greg did: self-mutilation, the leftist enablers, the doctors who do the procedure, depression, and suicide.
Many thought transgenders were expressing their right to be a woman or a man. When pointing out that this isn’t natural – well, who am I to say what is natural and what is not would be the response? To which I’m mildly dumbstruck. Isn’t chopping off a penis, scooping out the testicles, and plasticizing the inside to replicate a vagina disturbing in anyway? Or soldering something like a dildo onto the mons pubis a little strange? Not to them. When people argue that rights for lesbians and gays, but that is it. I laugh. It doesn’t end there. The revolution never ends. LG.. bisexual… transsexual… questioning… etc. etc. As another pointed out above there is no end. Pedophilia and bestiality are illegal now, but so were sodomy and homosexuality. Hell, having a three-some was against the law in some areas. This is the definition of a slippery slope.
The scariest part is that it is obvious where this is all going but the march continues unabated.
I can respect your position, but what’s your opinion on those who are chemically and mentally women, but who’s bodies were born male?
As in, they were born with penises and without breasts, but for their entire development their bodies had been pumping female hormones and female impulses into their bodies? Are we to leave them as some freak of nature when a couple of incisions and implants could help them lead normal lives? Is that really fair in a society where we have the ability to help these people with no consequence to themselves or others?
Are you talking about people who are born biologically ambiguous or “intersexed”? That is actually a very interesting phenomenon. The standard practice for decades in America has been to surgically and hormonally modify these people, beginning in childhood, so they look like one sex or another.
I think this is a horrible practice which should be entirely banned. Parents and doctors should not decide for a child to have his body radically modified. And many people who have gone through such massive forced modifications as children are very unhappy with the process and the results. Many would have simply preferred to live with being a freak of nature than to live with being a mutilated freak of nature.
Because such modifications do not undo their problems. They just make them look like one sex or another.
At the very least, I think that such people should be allowed to wait until adulthood and decide for themselves what should be done. And in some cases, when simple hormone therapies can normalize them, they should be made available. But I am not comfortable with radical surgical alterations.
Why not just accept that there are some people who are neither male nor female, and stop using surgery as a procrustean bed to force them into one category or another?
I was distraught when I came across this article recently: A Boys’ Camp to Redefine Gender.
Not only are cruel liberals promoting and enabling the surgical mutilation of mentally troubled adults, but they’re also pushing the trans fad on to innocent children. (Notice how almost all the children pictured are white.)
Alright… I always use the word “evil” with caution, but I find no other apt expression for what is done in these “boy camps”. This is an outrageous crime… and I would be called a “hater” for saying that. Go figure…
You are so right. Changing a child’s body is an abomination. Leave ’em alone and leave the choice up to them. They might like themselves the way they are later in life.
I know the response: suppose your kid is born with a club foot or a harelip? Of course we aren’t allowed to say harelip anymore, but I am such a crank.
This can be an easily solved problem with simple eugenic measures. We have the capabilities now to detect diseases and deformities afflicting a fetus. Why should we let one person suffer from the infliction of a gender mixed identity?
Part of me wonders if the whole transgender movement surfaced because of the rising number of gender-conflicted individuals as populations swelled? A subculture may have arisen around them in their quest for an identity.
Just came across this, makes the same points that you did. I wonder if he read your article:
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/michael-w-chapman/johns-hopkins-psychiatrist-transgender-mental-disorder-sex-change
You’re right about the enablers, exploiters and profiteers being genuinely evil. It’s the same type of situation as lawyers and judges and the whole associated apparatus that encourages and enables vindictive ex wives. And the liberal politicians and activists that promotes and profits from blacks behaving badly.
Rodney, you beat me to that article by a couple of hours. I’m sure that those pushing the pro-transgender agenda (maybe we can start calling it the pro-mutilation agenda?) will simply start a smear campaign against Dr. Paul R. McHugh and brand him a “crackpot homophobe/transphobe” for, you know, being a responsible medical authority and speaking sense in the wilderness of unscrupulous complicity in the medical profession.
Someone mentioned a similar concept – whites are born white but think like blacks (or any non-white identity). “I’m a black (or non-white) trapped inside a white body.” Comment?
I do agree with this essay. However, it is not just doctors who are doing harm, it is also academics like Judith Butler who is the heroine of the trans people. She now claims that that is not what she meant. Perhaps not, but she damn well knew that was how it would be understood. What about the pharmaceutical companies who are making big profits? Not to mention the psychologists and psychiatrists who see these people as objects of study. Also a lot of gay people are pressured into doing it in a culture of intimidation and coercion. It is all over the internet. They create confusion and despair and when professionals say they can cure your confusion with a sex change operation, the whole concept of science as benevolent is called into question. As far as I am concerned this is the evil eugenics program backdooring with false promises.
Bolsheviks liked the idea of sex change reducing humanity to groveling freaks even if a few didn’t participate. And the Frankfurt “school”, doing classes on Transsexualism in the 1940’s. In Berkeley of all places. Beat the routine at Dachau. So they, the instant Professors or sexual predators stuffed in tweed jacket and tight black turtleneck ready for some rough lecturing on the subject of the origins of the repressive personality and General Genitalia Mutation.
There’s a recognized psychological condition called Body Integrity Identity Disorder in which people come to believe that some part of their body (usually a limb) doesn’t belong there and should be amputated. How is the belief that one is a “woman trapped in a man’s body” and should therefore be surgically altered any different than the idea that one should not have a left leg? Almost no one would find the desire to amputate a perfectly healthy limb sane, yet “transgender” is shaping up to be the next great crusade for the leading edge progressive. I can only guess this is so because sex change fits into the leftist narrative that gender is just a culturally determined choice, while cutting off a healthy limb just sounds crazy and pointless.
Greg the zoophile wave is coming our way too… http://www.vice.com/vice-profiles/animal-fuckers-219
It has been discovered that there is a sexual dimorphism in the brains of humans. They also found out that people with, what you call a “mental illness”, Gender Dysphoria were born with the brains of their Gender Identity because of a lack of, or presence of, too much androgens when the brain was developing. They were born with brains that are feminized or masculine. So, there is legitimacy to when someone “thinks” they are said gender, they are telling the truth, and it’s our language that makes everything confusing. Me for example, a trans woman, I’ve known since I was 4, and have felt mentally female my entire life. Me, many psychologists, therapists, and others all agree that it doesn’t belong in the DSM, and is more of a birth defect than anything… like others who are intersex.
You see, chromosomes don’t mean squat to us anymore now that we are no longer developing in the womb. I doubt you even truly know your own! When’s the last time you got them checked? There are women with AIS who are XY, as well as men that are XX XXY XXXY, etc… so sure, if you want to lump all these people into a third gender, then please feel free to fight for that cause I would love a new bathroom installed everywhere that doesn’t make someone mad that I use it!!!
Your thoughts on the surgeries now are something that really throws me off here. First, “self-mutilation”? You know that doctors do the surgeries, right? No “self” involved, besides making the decision to proceed… but that’s not the definition of “self-mutilation”, sorry. BUT if you were to know some more trans people that you talked to, you might know that sometimes Gender Dysphoria is a sliding scale in the degree of how feminized or masculine the person’s brain is. Some have it so strong, that their brains are so hard-wired female or male, that having the parts of the other gender push them to hardcore depression/anxiety, that having to do such surgeries is the ONLY way to relieve it. It’s the 21’s century after-all, we have the technology. Now, if you start having jaundice and find you need a kidney, I hope you choose to fall dead on the floor, cause the “self-mutilation” involved here is against your opinion.
I would love to offer one last correction for you too, the definition of “transphobia” doesn’t match what you are trying to say here. You are being “sexist” because to you a trans woman isn’t a woman because she’s too “manly looking”. So, the women that fall into that boat, of looking like a man, are also scrutinized by your judgements here. Being for surgeries should help you in defending this argument though, cause “Facial Feminization Surgery” does a lot to fix the faces of these “ugly” dames.
You are an absolute moron. Transgender doesn’t even need to include SRS. To be transgender, nothing is required except for self knowledge. Transphobia is an entirely correct term. U are afraid of somebody who naturally was assigned gender upon birth, based on sex. Sex can be changed, and isn’t even the same thing as gender. Why am I wasting my time informing bigots who don’t know how to do research? Cuz I’m trying to educate them, duh. Transphobia isn’t natural at all.
If ‘transgenders’ bring up physical evidence of abnormal brain dimorphism, which is uncertain anyway, we might point to the rather less ambiguous physical facts of their sexal organs, and where those are pointing at ( so to speak ) . Also, chopping off your dick seems a bit of an overkill when dealing with supposed hormonal imbalances.
I find this absolutely disgusting and outraging. What is your problem with trans people? I’m a trans boy myself and I can assure you I am perfectly healthy, both physically and mentally. People like you are the reason many, many trans people get mental illnesses though. Your justification is pointless. Transgenders and transsexuals (two different things!) have existed since forever and people like you will not change that. Trans people do no harm, they just want to be who they truly are. Is that too much?
I pity trans people because they are mentally ill. They are deluded about who they truly are, just as other people are deluded to think they are Jesus or Napoleon. I hate the Leftists who have made humoring and mutilating these people the latest opportunity to signal their moral superiority. Sorry, but my disapproval does not make it more likely for a man to take hormones and cut his dick off. I hope it makes it less likely.
This is my 3,000th comment, by the way.
Great article. Shame on the medical industry for exploiting and profiting from those suffering from this mental illness. Any and all physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, mental health technicians/clinicians who are currently pushing the fraudulent gender reassignment MtF protocol: ((sadistic mutilating surgeries, cross sex hormone injections, breast implants, amphetamines (adderall) and anti depressants)) are ethically, morally and professionally corrupt. The “transexual”, “transgender” trend is a hoax, promoted by the Devil, perpetrated on the mentally ill by for profit. It’s a crime not a civil right
Trannies are weirdoes and maybe have brain/body matching problems, but ‘mental illness’ is a non-category. Biological and physical damage to brain, etc. that cause behavior changes have nothing to do with moralizing and pretending it’s science. If you’re going to be a paternalist moralizer don’t use some therapeutic-state Commie bullshit like ‘mental health’, just call it what it is, promoting your morality and values.
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