2,052 words
Ryan T. Anderson
When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment
New York: Encounter Books, 2018
“At the heart of the transgender moment are radical ideas about the human person – in particular, that people are what they claim to be, regardless of contrary evidence.” — Ryan T. Anderson[1]
There is no aspect of Leftist ideology quite as far from reality as that of the transgenderists. Transgender (or more accurately transsexual; I will deliberately use the terms interchangeably in this review) is the “T” in the ever-fashionable LGBTQ package that has been shoved down my throat, or so it seems, by every female Sunday school teacher and secular schoolmarm I’ve run into since at least the early 1990s – not to mention every TV program. Transgender people are those who imagine they are trapped in the body of the opposite sex. According to transgender activists, a person’s sex, or “gender,” is “assigned” at birth. As children grow up, some come to believe they are not actually of the “gender” they were “assigned.” This is called gender dysphoria, and this illness is believed, by the current political and medical establishment, to be best treated through transgender therapy – for now. Interestingly enough, the first transsexual was an eccentric Danish man who transitioned in the 1930s.[2]
When Harry Became Sally is written by an activist at the cuckservative Heritage Foundation, Ryan T. Anderson. Previously, Anderson was the last sentinel opposing the gay marriage movement during Obama’s second term. As such, he should be considered incredibly brave, despite being linked to a craven and flaccid group like the Heritage Foundation. One can see his defense of monogamous, one man-one woman marriage here and here. Anderson has done considerable research for this book, but I will add some things from the perspective of the Dissident Right.
According to transgender ideology, a person who “identifies” as a sex opposite to their “assigned gender” should be unquestioningly treated as though they really are of that other sex. Thus, there is a confusing and constantly evolving array of terms for transsexuals of every type. To explain the most basic transsexual shibboleth in frank and truthful terms: A trans woman is a man who is pretending to be a woman. A trans boy or man is a female pretending to be a male. The name corresponding to a transsexual’s “assigned” sex is called a “deadname.” To call a trans person by their “deadname” is considered an insult.
This complex array of terms and taboos is but one of the “three realities” that Anderson identifies in transgender activists, which are:
- They are always changing their creed and expanding their demands – yesterday’s mandatory vocabulary become tomorrow’s epithets.
- Even as their own position shifts, transgenderists are unwilling to consider contrary evidence, and they refuse to take competing interests of privacy or safety into account.
- The transgender movement is inclined toward coercion.
To put it in philosophical terms: transsexual ideology has a flawed ontology – its conception of the nature of being. Transgender activists suppose that if one thinks they are a particular thing, then they are that thing. Transsexualists demand that one accepts something that is obviously untrue. Likewise, they have the concept of “gender fluidity” – meaning that a person can be a boy on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and a girl on the other days.
I won’t mince words here – the trans woman in the picture above looks dangerous. The trans movement would have us ignore this person’s obvious red flags as well as any genuine concerns for privacy or safety.
Transsexual therapy ranges from puberty-blocking drugs for children to gender reassignment surgery in which a person’s genitalia is removed and replaced with a cosmetic facsimile of the opposite sex’s. There is even a lingo to describe the various surgical procedures; for example, female to male transition surgery is called “bottom surgery,” and in male to female surgery, castration is called “orchiectomy.” The addition of a cosmetic vagina is a “vaginoplasty.”
There are also transgender people who don’t go for hormones or surgery at all, and instead merely dress like the opposite sex. Many transsexuals are simply men living out a fetish. Lesbian get-togethers often draw horny men dressed as women claiming to be lesbians. In fact, it is this group of ultra-competitive, otherwise straight white men with this fetish who lead the movement. Anderson doesn’t name or examine this bunch; I’ve discovered this through other sources. He does, however, mention the Orwellian-sounding group, the Human Rights Campaign, as the organization that is most effective in pushing transsexual ideology.
Anderson points out what transgender activists deliberately ignore: namely, those who detransition from their trans state back to their “assigned” sex. One can see detransitioning YouTube videos here and here. Those seeking to transition usually have some sort of mental or self-esteem problem that is misdiagnosed as gender dysphoria, but the cultural domination currently enjoyed by transgender activists is causing people with unmet psychological or spiritual needs to misapply a sexual fetish as the solution to their problems. Detransitioners claim that they got little in the way of serious counseling. Instead, they get hormone treatments which don’t solve their problems. It’s a “take the testosterone gel first and ask questions later” type of cure. This includes treatment for still-developing teenagers with very poor judgement. Those who transition have a much higher suicide rate than the average.
Anderson devotes an entire chapter to natural biological sex differences; I assume most readers have already had a biology class, so I won’t discuss it here. Suffice to say that we are indeed in a culture gone mad when transgender ideology is not exposed as a pseudoscience, and actual science is suppressed.
Transgender ideology is transmitted to children using this nonsense. This graphic, which tellingly makes use of a mythical unicorn, is a catechism of pseudoscience and is an indicator of transgender ideology dominating society.
Critical thinking from the Right
Transsexual ideology would never have developed without the “civil rights” movement coming before. (Anderson doesn’t mention this.) The “civil rights” movement is the Big Lie at the center of modern American society. If one believes that “civil rights” was a success, that blacks took their place alongside whites after 1964 to the betterment of America, and that “content of character” and race have no correlation, then one misreads the data. Believing in the Big Lie also undermines the legitimacy of resistance to any social movement, no matter how obviously untruthful or destructive, as long as that movement assumes the language and form of “civil rights.”
The second-wave feminism of the 1960s and ‘70s is an ideological daughter of the African rebellion called “civil rights.” In turn, second-wave feminism created the transgender movement. Anderson writes:
The deconstruction of gender started with a denial of the biological basis for sex differences, and this is where some seemingly contradictory ideas have a common root. That denial is also the historical link between the transgender movement and radical feminism. While these two movements don’t have the same objectives and are sometimes at odds, they have drawn inspiration from each other in problematizing gender and detaching it from biology.[3]
Anderson critiques second-wave feminism in detail in the rest of Chapter 7.
Unlike Marxism, second-wave feminism, neoconservativism, and other Leftist pathologies, transsexual ideology did not originate as a subversive Jewish social movement in the purest sense. If there is a JQ angle to the transsexual movement, it is probably one of funding and promoting an obviously damaging social pathology among the gentiles – but this is beyond the scope of this article. The man who developed the transsexual ideology and tested his theories on patients was a psychologist from New Zealand named John Money (1921-2006), who was of English and Welsh descent. This ideology was fine-tuned and spread in the 1960s alongside “civil rights” and second-wave feminism.
Support for transsexuals as a manifestation of Obama’s weak character
In Chapter 8, Anderson discusses how transsexual ideology increasingly dominated the Obama administration’s policies as his second term limped along. Through various means, such as “dear colleague” letters, they pushed the idea that trans women can use the same locker rooms, restrooms, and safe spaces as “assigned” women, despite the fact that actual women are endangered by it. Anderson shows a series of instances where trans women have used their access to private ladies’ rooms and such to take photographs or otherwise exercise lewd behavior. Such policies were self-evidently risky, but Obama went along with them anyway.
Examining Obama’s transsexual policies in hindsight can illuminate much regarding Obama’s character and inner presidential compass. The fact of Obama’s support for a tiny but vocal minority pursuing an unsound philosophy without regard for the consequences makes the failures of his second term easier to understand. It is thus clear that Obama had no ideas of his own and possesses a weak character. He was easily dominated by well-organized pressure groups on the Left.
Like the transgender movement itself, the election of a weak President such as Obama was the result of the metapolitical victory of “civil rights.” Obama’s rise was fueled by the proverbial “civil rights”-believing white liberal’s desire for a black leader who acted like a perfect gentleman. Once in office, however, Obama’s weak character led his administration to maintain the full-blown “civil rights” façade despite the fact that they could have supported continuing desegregation without enabling black pathologies. Instead, they reinforced black pathologies and inadvertently ceded moral authority to a local beat cop when Obama commented on a minor police scuffle in 2009, leading to the “beer summit.” He doubled down on his error when he hyped the Trayvon Martin case during the 2012 campaign, although it is clear he didn’t need to exacerbate racial tensions to win. Likewise, in the lead-up to the 2014 midterms, he pushed the Michael Brown fiasco, which led to months of race riots and other problems.
In short, support for the patently foolish agenda of transgenderism was yet another manifestation of poor judgement and weak character in Obama, as well as more bitter fruit from the “civil rights” religion that got him elected in the first place.
Transgender ideology is a cardboard castle
Anderson writes:
Transgender ideology may appear to be establishing a firm place in our culture, yet there are signs of defensiveness among its advocates, as if they realize that their claims are contrary to basic, self-evident truths. The transgender moment may turn out to be fleeting, but that doesn’t mean we should expect it to fade away on its own. We need to insist on telling the truth, and on preventing lives from being irreparably damaged.[4]
I’d like to take this idea further using a military metaphor: transsexualism is a castle whose walls and keep are made of cardboard. This cardboard castle is also situated on indefensible terrain. To attack this ideology is to attack the Left’s weakest point, using the strengths of the Right. To enumerate:
- Transsexualism denies self-evident truths.
- Transgender activists are dividing the Left. Even if “Nazis” go against transsexuals, Leftists such as the “TERFS” will still “punch left.”
- The middle-of-the-road public is already quietly opposed to transsexuals, as evidenced by the Target “bathroom boycott.” However, this resistance could be made very loud indeed. Trans men who dominate women’s sporting events are obviously cheating, for example; even the low-brow public understands cheating in sports.
- Transsexual medical treatments are a form of malpractice. The entire transsexual medical industry is one lawsuit away from a feeding frenzy of slimy, money-grubbing lawyers.
- Everyone on the Right can participate in taking down transsexual ideology. In this regard, cuckservatives can be organized to actually do good rather than merely shill for Israel or pretend to believe in Martin Luther King’s “dream” while supporting lower taxes for crony capitalists. At the same time, Leftist money and energy would be diverted into defending that which is indefensible.
- Much of transsexual ideology is hurting vulnerable children.
- Transgender activists are wicked. Stand up, look them square in the eye, and bring them down.
Notes
[1] When Harry Became Sally, p. 40.
[2] It is likely that the 1930s was the time when Leftist power was at its zenith. The mainstream American media claimed that the USSR was a paradise. Furthermore, the first “civil rights” gains occurred in the United States at that time, and there was no white resistance.
[3] When Harry Became Sally, p. 157.
[4] When Harry Became Sally, p. 18.
10 comments
Morris,
My opinion is that you are basically correct, but have read too little on the subject.
For example, the true origin of the ideology was not the NZ man you mention (and I thank you for that, it is the only new point to me, will be looking it up), but a Jewish-run museum of perversion cum medical practice in Weimar Germany.
The director of that, ‘Hirschfeldt’ or similar, was also a surgeon and did (or directed) the operation on the Danish man (or Girl, as the fairly recent film would have it), and several others. In a way, it is a shame that the NSDAP were so thorough in destroying the records. All must have died pretty quickly from immunological collapse, but it seems the names of the other victims are lost.
In the case of the Dane, at least, that included transplantation of a womb and ovaries from, one would suppose, a recently deceased woman.
This was very stupid, since immunological rejection was already well known. The Dane’s days were numbered.
He was only the most famous case, there were several others.
When ‘sex-change’ surgery resumed in the 1950’s (most famously with ‘Christine’ Jorgensson), and since, nobody has tried such radical Dr. Frankenstein techniques.
The new trend is women pumping themselves up with testosterone, and claiming to be men. In general, though, they keep their plumbing intact (thus the bullshit ‘Man Gives Birth’ headlines and clickbait).
Lesbian feminists hate it, but looking at the statistics, it is well into Great Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds territory.
I can’t really see why the rad. les. crowd finds it troubling, since most ‘FTM’ go with women, don’t do much in the way of surgery, so I can’t see how they are much different from a trad. butch dyke … except for the ‘really a man’ claim.
All very strange.
Walt Heyer is an interesting writer on his own experiences.
None of it is new, though. Hepburn (Kath., not Audrey) went out of her way to play a man off-stage, and had tastes to match. Several Roman emperors married gelded, and presumably effeminate, catamites.
Julius Caesar, though not an emperor, was notorious for such tastes, and may have set the pattern.
The only plausible likeness of Sappho that has survived to us, and the descriptions, suggest a rather unattractive manly-looking woman.
This is before even considering mythology. Etc.
What is new is various state systems (all European or European-derived) trying to shove the ideology down the throats of small children.
Therein lies great evil.
>Julius Caesar, though not an emperor, was notorious for such tastes, and may have set the pattern.
Afaik, there is no serious historical source stating that, and most historians, even in today’s homo-friendly age, put rumors of Caesar’s pederasty on basic crude slander of the era, which was rife.
Telling a buddy you had a falling out with that you’re gonna f*ck him in the a*s was probably a lot more common than actual incidents of homosexuality, as numerous surviving pieces of literature suggest.
It is impossible to prove either way. However, I find the account of Suetonius (of the chant by his legionaires) quite convincing, perhaps it was inserted by a later monk-copyist, but it seems very unlikely.
I am not saying that he appears to have been homosexual or had a fetish for trannies, just bisexual. As you would know, a little later (in historical time) a few Roman emperors did indeed marry, or take as lovers, gelded transvestite men.
I won’t return to Tiberius, but do you really think the account of his ‘minnows’ on the Isle of Capri in his semi-retirement is a fabrication?
I don’t.
I notice that many people on this and other sites see Yukio Mishima as an inspiring figure, he certainly was a pivot point for, to an extent, turning the polity around, although the party to benefit from it was the one most partial to the US alliance, hence continuing as a colony.
The general opinion in Japan is that his second in the raid on the Army base in Yotsuya (who failed to deliver a quick coup de grace) was also his catamite. One may also read Confessions of a Mask, hints abound in other works, but that is the most direct. He was clearly a male homosexual. The only reason for his late marriage was progeny, which is not a bad reason.
One can also view his debate with extreme leftist university students at (IIRC) Tokyo University on u-tube (last time I was watching it, Japanese only, somebody may have added subtitles since).
His words and body language were very funny, and the attempts of the students to howl him down completely ineffective. His clothing at the tIme, however, was not a million miles from Tom of Finland. String T-shirt and tight (not flared) trousers.This was many years before punk-rock styles, and even more before they arrived here (1990s), so clearly male homosexual style.
His long-term tranny lover has also spoken about their connection.
OTOH, I have a good friend who could be described as an identarian or traditionalist, as such he shifted his band from electro-punk to traditional festive music (still modelled after old punk-rock but not recognisable).
Their song from the earlier phase, ‘No Mishima, No Future’ (everything except the title is not in English) is a good example for starting.
They had other good ones.
>>Transsexual medical treatments are a form of malpractice.
Bravo. The medical community needs to clean house and purge these charlatans.
One major institution in the USA. Johns Hopkins, noticing the lack of success of sex-change surgery, many years ago, decided to stop. AFAIK, they still have that policy.
The trans ideolody is built on a giant lie.
Oh, if you don’t allow them what they want, they will kill themselves.
In fact, the high suicide rates are post ‘transition’.
The terms Transgender Transsexual and Transvestite where actually coined by a Jewish “sexologist” called Dr Magnus Hirschfield and I believe he performed the first “sex change” operation and it was his books that the Nazis where burning.
You are correct in a limited way, Scott.
Beyond that the ‘Institute’ had a massive library of weird pornography, and a museum of ‘stimulating’ devices and dress (a very wide range, from my reading). The destruction of Hirschfield’s (excuse my incorrect guess at the spelling of the false name he was using at the time) clinical records
The former was the main target of the book-burning by NSDAP members and supporters. The latter were destroyed in the later demolition.
The latter, would have been interesting to view, but in the cultural context of now, it is probably a good thing that the artifacts were also destroyed. I am not entirely sure on that point.
The Danish man was one of several ”experiments’ of things of the sane kind, by, or directed by ,the same Hertzfeldt, all likely all dead within a year and a bit.
That finding the evils of his ‘clinical practice’ is absolutely clear
I may be wrong, but the only reason the Danish man, among several other victims of Heartfeldt beame a feature film made by Jews was the odd (and unique) position viis a vis the Tihird Reich.they (the Danes) were allowed to continue their old–school pro-native and pro-labour social democratic politics.
IMHO, we will never hear of Dr. Frankenstein’s othetr experiments.
All failures in the same way, death within a year or just a little longer
I sometimes wonder if it is possible that transsexualism is a ‘real thing’ – in so much as one organ of the mind identifies as something other than its own body, or at least doesn’t positively or fully identify with it to one extent or another.
But that doesn’t mean such an identification is permanent, innate, consistent, healthy, natural or free from being manipulated by outside influence. It just means such a state could exist.
That also doesn’t mean other organs of the mind in that person are abnormal in such cases, even if that one to do with identifying its sex is. ( i.e it identifies as the opposite sex, while all the other organs of the mind are effectively accepting with the current sex. )
In that most generous case scenario what we have currently is a situation where this abnormal identification is mandated as the ‘real’ identity of that person, and it’s only bigotry, ignorance and hatred that would consider possibilities other than gender-reassignment surgery and full recognition of this person for their new gender.
Of course it’s a ridiculous and very dangerous demand. But that’s what the left do I guess.
And even if that most generous scenario is true… it doesn’t exist in isolation. There’s a world of stuff pushing in these kinds of directions.
Jewish psychoanalytical ideas, although false remain powerful, and more or less propose that everyone ‘bad’ is somehow sexually repressed. And if we could just get in contact with these forbidden or repressed sexual feelings we would feel harmony and conflict would end. Although nobody takes it seriously scientifically, this kind of Jewish rhetorical pseudoscience still maintains a kind of gnawing currency in popular culture, I’m sorry to say even in our own right wing circles sometimes, and has probably come to be the underlying nurturing environment for a lot of modern sexual and gender-identity ills.
Maybe a certain percentage of people, who feel lost and confused with very malleable psychological traits, and who find life very difficult are identifying as transsexual to simply conform to this, and other kinds of Jewish ideas and Jewish pressures that they are bombarded with day in day out, implicitly and explicitly in media, education and so on. They have absorbed the notion that to be a more harmonious, more realized a person one has to be demented.
More so, if they do this, they will not only be a ‘good’ person, but a cool person, they will become a revered symbol of suffering and difference. This will make them special. If they become this stuff, then they will really be somebody who will be treated with respect and dignity. Male to female transsexualism might be a way out of the pain and pressures of masculinity for some people, like adopting blackness was a way out of the pressures of whiteness for Rachel Dolezal.
It’s a sad and sorry state of affairs.
This was a good article, but I am not sure that transgenderism is the passing fad that the author suggests. The decay of this age is continuing and relentless. I remember reading someone who said that as the decay continues, Bill Clinton’s term would be seen by future generations as a time of arch conservatism. At the time, this was laughable, as it was seen as the lowest of lows, cigars, Monica Lewinsky, etc. But time showed that this was true, Bill Clinton would easily be the most arch conservative Democrat in congress, and far more “conservative” than many, if not most, republicans of today. As decay progresses, things must get worse, however sickly the patient is now, he will be even sicker in the future, likewise with the sick society. I predict that the current state of transgenderism will be seen as a conservative age 20 years from now, however this movement/ideology will have mutated by 2039, it will be several times more bizarre, unhealthy, and sick than we see now. My guess is that animals will be involved, and multiple sets of genitalia will be attached to the same individual, all celebrated by the elites. Those who only accept a fully homosexual society and 2019 era transgenderism will be seen as evil troglodytes.
Many transsexuals are simply men living out a fetish. Lesbian get-togethers often draw horny men dressed as women claiming to be lesbians. In fact, it is this group of ultra-competitive, otherwise straight white men with this fetish who lead the movement.
Anyone having difficulty understanding this subject should focus on the sentences above. They explain much of it.
The convoluted structure of the Gender Unicorn above is necessary, because so many alleged “transwomen” are sexually attracted to actual women, not other men. That should be a severe problem for transsexualism, since most actual women are heterosexual. If the various procedures that purport to change men into women worked, they would not produce so many lesbians.
Why transsexual men are so weird may be hard to figure out, but why, after and during their “transitions,” so many of them want to have sex with women is easy to understand.
Transsexual men have accordingly made “trans-misogyny” one of their important causes. In practice “trans-misogyny” often means simply the reluctance of actual lesbians to have sex with men who claim to be lesbians. The importance for transsexual men of defeating this “trans-misogyny” is, again, easy to understand.
It’s a kind of pick-up artistry for sexually confused perverts, using language that sounds modern and complex.
https://terfisaslur.com/cotton-ceiling/
In any case, “straight white men with this fetish … lead the movement” tells us much of what we need to know about modern transsexualism.
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