Counter-Currents
Brett, aka Brianna (last name unknown)
1,531 words
Last Saturday afternoon at a public park east of Manchester in northern England, a 16-year-old male whose first name at birth was “Brett” died from multiple stab wounds. I don’t know Brett’s legal surname at the moment, because the press has refrained from reporting it.
At some point — from what I am able to infer from news reports, it was less than a year ago — Brett decided that his name was “Brianna” and declared that he was a female rather than a male. At the time of his death, he was going by “Brianna Ghey” on his numerous social-media posts. Legally, however, he never changed his name, so unless trans activists get their way, he will be listed as a male named Brett on his death certificate.
In England, one paper — The Times — used Brett’s legal first name and refrained from calling him a “girl,” which is factually sound because any basic chromosomal test would establish that he was a male. In trans circles — which, not very long ago, were rightly deemed to be composed of a tiny cluster of emotionally crippled and delusional misfits who have managed through unparalleled levels of psychotic vindictiveness and a hefty amount of enabling from the Powers That Be to spread their delusions to the point where they are now journalistic and governmental gospel truth — factually reporting someone’s biological gender and their name at birth is known as “deadnaming” and is an unforgivable offense. To hear some of the caterwauling, letting the world know that this dead person’s name was “Brett” at birth seems worse to some people than the fact that he was stabbed about 20 times and died as a result. Who cares about “deadnaming” when the subject is dead? Do we have some twisted priorities here, or what?
Still, people acted — emphasis on the word “acted” — appalled and horrified that Brett’s corpse was somehow “publicly disrespected” when a British newspaper published his birth name. Would they think that a newspaper “publicly disrespected” a murder victim if they used his real name and noted that the person had identified as a Nazi before being stabbed to death?
Even The Times was brought to heel, though, and in subsequent revisions of their story, they called Brett a girl and erased any trace of the fact that his real legal name was “Brett.”
In fact, merely saying that his name at birth was “Brett” was depicted by many of the usual suspects as a cruel and sadistic attempt at “erasure” — of scrubbing away his true gender identity and his real name, even though he was truly a male and his legal name at the time of his death was Brett.
Labour MP Charlotte Nichols has announced that she will be filing a formal complaint about The Times with England’s Independent Press Standards Organisation, which, according to Wikipedia, “exists to promote and uphold the highest professional standards of journalism.”
I must have fallen asleep Rip Van Winkle-style, but when I went to journalism school, factually reporting someone’s birth name was the very essence of professional journalism. And back in the 1980s, when I cut my teeth on what honest reporting was at least supposed to be, the only true newsworthy “erasure” in this story was the fact that Brett had been actively engaged in attempting to erase his verifiable birth name and quantifiable biological sex. The idea that Brett was ever a female, even for a half-second, is provably fraudulent. The fact that he was born as “Brett” is just that — a fact — and should be within the purview of any honest journalist to report.
You can buy Jim Goad’s ANSWER Me! here.
But the current year is 2023, and every major newspaper, as well as Wikipedia, are using feminine pronouns to refer to this biological male.
None of this offends me due to corny, moldy, and borderline hysterical notions of “degeneracy” or “moral decay”; it offends me simply because his name was Brett and he was a male, and I seem to be the only one reporting it.
Lies offend me. I realize I’m in the minority with that these days.
A bitter irony is the fact that every media outlet is reporting that two teenagers, both 15 years old, one of them a boy and one of them a girl, have been arrested and charged with Brett’s murder.
Okay, two can play at this: HOW THE HELL WERE YOU ABLE TO DETERMINE THAT ONE WAS A BOY AND ONE WAS A GIRL?
Nearly everyone — and this includes nearly all of the hired propagandists who transitioned away from being “journalists” a decade or two ago — is either completely convinced, or is leaning strongly toward the idea, that Brett/Brianna was murdered because he was a tranny. It’s the same tired bullshit we hear whenever someone black gets murdered, despite the fact that they are overwhelmingly murdered by other blacks: somehow, it couldn’t have been a petty drug or personal dispute; they were slain because they were black. Even when blacks kill other blacks, it’s due to “internalized white supremacy.”
In other words, there is no such thing as journalism anymore. If a fact is inconvenient to the narrative, it will not be reported.
As a result, England is abuzz with candlelight vigils and monstrous accusations that J. K. Rowling has “blood on her hands” and how there’s an epidemic of anti-trans murders that the cold, unfeeling, and probably closeted masses — who all clearly wish for all trannies to die slow and torturous deaths — are actively encouraging by doing heinous things such as noting that this dead teenaged boy was named “Brett.”
That’s the narrative. But what are the facts?
It’s extremely slippery to attempt to quantify anti-tranny murders for the simple fact that you can’t quantify who’s a tranny. All one has to do these days to “be” transgender is to say, “I’m transgender.” That’s it. No blood tests, no genital inspections, none of it. At best, you can extrapolate from self-reports, which are notoriously unreliable.
But since self-reports are all I have to work with, let me take — pardon the terminology — a stab at determining whether the rabid activists are accurate in labeling Brett’s murder part of an “epidemic” of anti-trans slayings.
Taking an extremely unscientific and wide-ranging estimate of there being anywhere from 200,000-500,000 self-identified trannies in the United Kingdom in 2018, this website took as gospel truth the allegation from a pro-trans org called Transgender Europe that the UK played host to the murders of 11 trannies since 2008. But then it dug a little further and concluded that two of the alleged murder victims had been miscategorized as trannies: One died as a result of suicide, and the other one’s death was listed as non-suspicious. Of the nine remaining fatalities, three were prostitutes who had been murdered by their clients, possibly after their clients encountered an unexpected penis. Another one was killed by his husband. Another one was killed by another tranny. Yet another was killed by a gay-identifying cross-dresser. Two were killed for reasons that “were linked to drug use.”
So that leaves only one tranny in all those years who might have been killed “because” they were a tranny.
Based on averaged data from 2008-2016, trannies are less than half as likely to be murdered in the UK than your average male. They are only about two-thirds as likely to be murdered than your average person. They are about equally as likely to be murdered as your average woman. And even if you want to count all those 11 victims, about 1,800 actual women were murdered in the UK over the same time span, which has no annual designated day of mourning for female murder victims analogous to the Transgender Day of Remembrance.
Oh, and one thing that doesn’t get much play in the media is the fact that trannies are much more likely to be murderers than murder victims.
I have no idea why Brett was killed. If he was stabbed 20 times, that’s awful. He could have been killed by a pair of trans-hating 15-year-olds. It’s possible. It could have been a drug deal gone wrong, just as it’s likely that Matthew Shepard’s highly publicized murder in Wyoming had nothing to do with him being gay, despite his corpse being propped up and used as an excuse to name a federal anti-hate crimes act. It could have been some petty romantic dispute gone severely awry.
Stabbing deaths are a near-daily occurrence in the UK, yet very few of them get as much attention as this one did. The fact that so many people have jumped to conclusions recklessly enough to break both of their legs about why Brett was killed suggests they care far more about their own agendas and their own precious feelings than they do about the truth of the matter.
My brother was murdered in Paris in 1969. He suffered 30-40 stab wounds and was strangled with his own belt. We never learned the specifics of his murder. The specifics didn’t matter to us, either. It only mattered that he was murdered and that we lost him.
The confused teenager who called himself “Brianna Ghey” is now dead. That’s a fact. Nearly everything else that’s publicly circulating about this story is fake and gay.
* * *
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47 comments
“It’s extremely slippery to attempt to quantify anti-tranny murders for the simple fact that you can’t quantify who’s a tranny.”
Pornographers don’t seem to have this problem.
“. . . any basic chromosomal test would establish that he was a male.”
I also require chromosome tests before addressing someone as Sir / Ma’am.
“Pornographers don’t seem to have this problem.”
Right you are.
This one’s clearly a tranny:
http://st.lowrider.com/uploads/sites/7/2017/04/Transmission-of-Information-TH400-Trans.jpg
A coworker of mine recently told me that he saw on his 25 year old daughter’s Facebook page that she claimed to be “non-binary.” Then he proceeded to say something like “but she’s my daughter and I gotta let her live her life like she wants.” If there is anyone in her life that needs to speak the truth to her, it’s her damn father. I’m not saying he should’ve made a huge deal out of it, but one should never be afraid to tell their children the things they need to hear even if they don’t want to hear it.
“Biological gender” is a solecism. “Gender” is a category of grammar, and by extension, a more general social category. “Biological sex”, as you have it later, is the correct construction. I realize that this was very likely an unconscious slip, but I think it important that we avoid Leftist linguistic dictates completely,
Yes. That is how mind control works, by corralling thought with language.
gender – sex
racism – nationalism
anti-semitism – defence of one’s people
gay – homosexual
lesbian – homosexual
LGBQT…… (P?) – aberrant sexualities
transgender – trans-(vestite/sexual)
1984 Appendix Newspeak
This is the absurd reactionary position that makes the left look reasonable by comparison.
There is a cultural component to the social display of one’s biological sex.
Dresses are gendered garments among Whites in the West.
Dresses are unisex garments among Polynesians.
Delicate sparkly diamond rings are female apparel.
Big class or team rings are male apparel.
It is typical of reactionary politics to deny the game exists and pretend that by doing so, winning is assured.
But reactionaries don’t have the political clout to force closure of the game entirely no matter how much they fantasize that they do.
What we want to affirm is that gender is a cultural phenomenon and not arbitrary.
Those communities that want to affirm advanced liberalism’s idea of ‘arbitrary sexual mores’ can have their own territories and those who want to have a more stable and predictable gendered expression of biological sex differences can have their own territories.
I can predict which one will implode first.
I don’t claim expertise on the the history of ‘gender’ but according to Wikipedia the word’s co-option as an awesomely malleable synonym for sex ( not conjugal relations ) began in 1955 and is attributed to everyone’s favourite antipodean Dr John Money.
My point (and I believe the original commenter’s) was merely that by adopting the terminology of the opposition we are ceding ground.
And my point is that you don’t have the option whether to ‘adopt the terminology of the opposition’ or not. They have the political high ground. And ‘not adopting the terminology’ is just taking your ball and going home while pretending to victory. There’s an aspect to ‘right’ and ‘conservative’ politics that is lazy and extremely anti-intellectual. As a consequence, many of their ‘tactics’ are not based upon a reasonable chance of success, but upon what’s easiest and most fun for the people who think of themselves as ‘on the right’ or ‘conservative’. In other words, ‘right-wingers’ and ‘conservatives’ have an evolutionary system for developing and promoting ideas that assures the dumbest take wins. As group, the right/conservative faction doesn’t have thought leaders, it has court jesters.
The simplest approach to the ‘gender question’ is to not fight about whether ‘gender’ is real, but whether gender is culturally-defined. Which it is. And no one on the other side will deny it. But by accepting these conditions, the counter-attack is simple: We don’t want your culture of arbitrary, whimsical gender whose trajectory is toward surgical interventions.
Once your enemy has weaponized a piece of your cultural landscape, you don’t have the option to pretend that landscape doesn’t exist or that it’s not contest.
The only viable options you have is to find ways to force your enemy to work harder to keep it or, better yet, to seize back control as much control of the area as possible.
What is not a viable option is to pretend that it’s not happening and that denial is the same thing as winning.
Then why did you say “great essay” below? Seems the author’s point is very similar to the commenter’s.
I don’t have to 100% agree with a position to recognize that it’s a well-written and thoughtful essay.
Is your screen handle by any chance inspired by Wimpy from the Popeye cartoons: “I’d gladly pay you Tuesday for a …”?
And in South Shore in Chicago we have prosecutors declining to charge a 19 yo identified in police lineups as the gunman in a mass shooting that killed a Hispanic women and her transgender daughter, and wounded two other trans wimmins on Jan 23. Kim Foxx resign you disgrace. Or at least have the decency to tell the trannies to their faces that you think black supremacy should prevail over even the much vaunted ‘rights’ like ‘not being viciously murdered’ of the tranners. There were more than 3,000 homicides in Cook County from 2020-2022 Kim Foxx, but I suppose this wave of chaos is all part of the plan for you.
“Stabbing deaths are a near-daily occurrence in the UK…”
The UK needs some reasonable knife control laws.
You can just walk into a store and buy a knife in the UK without any kind of background check.
Ridiculous!
I remember when a tranny was something that shifted your gears not someone who’s had their gears shifted.
(Note – this old joke has been repeated by Theo Von among others)
I don’t have the source, but I’ve heard that the UK has banned the sale of pointed kitchen knives. This is to prevent stabbings (though it seems they didn’t figure out that this doesn’t prevent slashing.) Of course, this epidemic of knife crime is by non-Whites. Closing the borders would help, but of course that’s out of the question.
Here’s an article on the pointy knife issue. Looks like the issue was pushed by the Church of England. The article is from 2019 but doesn’t say if any laws passed or not:
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/09/27/pointed-kitchen-knives-should-be-illegal-says-church-england/
This is an interesting tidbit from the article:
“Kitchen knives have already been reclassified as an “offensive weapon” under the Offensive Weapons Act 2019.”
But carrying weapons for “religious” reasons is apparently okay.
(e.g. The kirpan dagger which Sikhs are allowed to carry in public.)
https://www.gov.uk/buying-carrying-knives
From the looks of it, the kirpan is a harmless and friendly, even spiritually reaffirming knife:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=kirpan+dagger&t=h_&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images
If the UK simply required everyone to have their hands tied behind their backs at all times, they could all but eliminate stabbings. Maybe the UK needs some common sense hand use laws? (With the requisite “religious” exceptions, of course.)
Anyone can say they are a tranny, but to legally be a tranny is a complex bureaucratic process, so on this point Goad is speaking from right wing scene assumptions and not research.
Calling female-presenting people, however unconvincing, by their previous or normal male names is just goofy. You wouldn’t challenge someone who’s changed their name by deed poll with their “ACTUAL” name.
The only journalistic addendum needed is “Brianna, formerly known as Brett,”
somehow this was spun into a whole article of complaints about white gender benders.
A scribe worth his salt should be able to avoid using the name at all.
So would “a scribe worth his salt” have used hieroglyphics or semaphore signals to identify this person rather than his legal name?
On the other hand, I guess I can somewhat understand why people who hide behind ridiculous fake screen names might object to identifying people by their real names.
My apologies Mr Goad. Perhaps the pseudonym is ridiculous but all the other options I thought of were worse. I’m not much of a scribe so it didn’t occur me to me that this riposte to Buttercup could be seen as a dig at you, which I certainly didn’t intend. My approach in dealing with these people would be to avoid using their names or ridiculous pronouns at all as much as possible to their faces, and call them whatever you like behind their backs within the limits of decency, always referring to them in the plural if you need to use pronouns.
“Calling female-presenting people, however unconvincing, by their previous or normal male names is just goofy.”
I once went on a blind date with a woman named Andrea(pronounced Ahhhndrea). After a little back and forth she admitted her name is Andrea but she prefers to go by, one might even say she identifies as, Ahhhndrea. Seemed kinda “goofy” to me to refer to her that way, but maybe that’s just me.
Calling female-presenting people, however unconvincing, by their previous or normal male names is just goofy.
Okay, but if all it is is just “goofy,” why is an MP filing a formal complaint about it? It’s obviously effective enough to where our enemies see it as a threat, so there must be something to to it.
Something doesn’t have to be threatening to be annoying
You got that right.
That’s certainly true, but my only point was, since people who literally want us all to die (I’m making an educated assumption about the MP here) are seeking legal action for this name calling, maybe analyzing why they view it in such a hostile way is more productive than merely being annoyed by it.
And while yes, at a certain point denying that language and culture has turned a certain way does become pointless, I don’t believe we are anywhere near that point when it comes to trannys. The majority of the average folks I encounter (most of which are not part of the DR at all) find it ridiculous that the delusions of the mentally ill are now being made mandatory for the rest of us.
to legally be a tranny is a complex bureaucratic process
Brett never went through the “complex bureaucratic process,” which isn’t even available to underage Brits, so oopsy-daisy, you don’t have a point. His legal name of Brett will be listed on his death certificate. He simply started calling himself “Brianna” and pretending he was a woman.
Goad is speaking from right wing scene assumptions and not research.
I have never, not for a moment, identified as a member of any “right wing scene,” but I wouldn’t expect you to honor my personal pronouns.
somehow this was spun into a whole article of complaints about white gender benders.
No one commanded you to take this article so personally, fella. You’re the only person who mentioned that Brett was white. Somehow you spun an article that wasn’t about you and made it all about you.
Are you implying that I’m a tranny or some other non-normative gender because I criticised the article?
If you’re not a tranny, you sure act like a woman. What I’m saying outright—not even implying—is that you use a VERY silly pseudonym and one that clashes with your palpable bitterness. Maybe call yourself “Venus Fly Trap” or “Black Widow” or something more appropriate. You wagged your finger at me and tried to lecture me about what the proper journalistic protocol would be in this case, when according to my training in the field, I followed the rules of journalism right down to the letter. You also went beyond criticizing the article and took a couple personal swipes at me that were based on false assumptions. You also clearly don’t have the honor to admit that your whole “complex bureaucratic process” tap dance was a moot point because we’re talking about a teenage male in England. Try to have a nice day, which seems like it might take a lot of effort in your case.
Jim,
The article you linked contradicts you – did you even read it?
It says specifically that surgeries were planned to be banned (by Liz Truss, who is no longer in office, you’d need to look up whether this actually passed or not). In the article, it refers to the treatment schedules of the British National Health Service for “underage” (children) with gender dysphoria. I.e. the NHS recognizes that tranny kids are a thing.
If you googled “NHS trans children” you’d find the NHS page on the subject immediately showing that children with gender dysphoria are referred to a clinical psychologists, i.e. they go through a complex bureaucratic process to have their transgenderism verified by medical authorities.
While you’re reading female tone into my comments that isn’t there, the UK maintains clinics specifically for children with gender identity disorder / dysphoria.
Years ago when traveling abroad, I chatted with a native who was astonished that the USA population was only 13.5% black. He thought it was about 50% because the world press cannot stop talking about black issues.
It has become the same way with the trans phenomenon, so the stats on actual rates of murder are illuminating. Now everyone is worried that “hate” stats are going up… but what is the definition of hate? Is it hateful to be annoyed that the hospitals make it easier to find the pronouns in your medical records than whether you have a prostate or cervix that ought be screened for cancer?
I’m generally a live and let live type, but if we require someone to be 18 years old to vote, join the military, buy a gun, consent to adult sex, etc., yet limited pushback to medical gender interventions in kids whose minds may change as cultural tides ebb and flow over time.
Referring to yourself as “we,” when you’re not playacting as a king or queen, or referring to a person as “they” is a language crime. It ignores one of the basic linguistic differences that has to be made, between singular and plural. I assume that all languages, even those of irrational and primitive peoples, have or had this difference. Their attempt at imposing this linguistic chaos on society is not a minor thing.
Excellent point, but you omitted “editors and people with tapeworms.” By all means we must shun the newspeak.
New way to greet one another today in this ‘Ghey New Age’ with a big smile that no one can bitch about:
“Hi there, you! How’s it going”?
Etc.’
The fact that the police have not released the race of the two tranny-stabbers makes me suspect that they are some of the darker-complected denizens of the sceptred isle. Few people discuss it, but the dark-complected culture-enrichers don’t cotton to the LGBTOMGWTF vibe.
That’s been speculated, but the area in question is overwhelmingly white.
It’s also been speculated that this was some sort of tranny-on-tranny squabble.
I’ve been told it’s against English law to reveal the names of accused criminal perpetrators who are underage, so we may not know the identities of the perps until after a trial has concluded.
Maybe it was a melanin-enhanced tranny who did the stabbing. That would be the cherry on the cake.
Brett screwed Brett.
Great essay.
Jim,
Just wanted to say I was sorry to learn of the circumstances of your dear brother’s passing.
I know it’s a bit of a cliche to say this, but it sounds like he was just too damn good for this world.
Regardless of what we believe, we know he’s not suffering now, and I hope that’s been of some comfort to you over the years.
RIP Bucky – gone but not forgotten.
Why was he called Ghey? Was Fhague already taken?
Or Homeaux
We should always remember the great Irish gay rights activist, Home O’Seksual.
And his two brothers Michael Fitzpatrick and Patrick Fitzmichael.
Now that’s funny!
Perhaps some 20 years ago a gay coworker rolled his eyes and expressed annoyance at a young guy regular customer taken to presenting as female. He and many gays saw it as just the confused early phase of someone figuring out they were on the LGB spectrum. Years later it seems a chunk of the lgb community still feels the same way though is less vocal about it. There’s seemingly an agreement to stick together and not bicker, something the Right ought learn when it’s not trying to gouge each other’s eyes out.
As the whole lgb spectrum is now mainstream, how does a young neurotic member get to claim the same victimhood of the 1960-70s?
I’m no fan of banning books, but consider the ‘banned’ book “Gender Queer”. Is it truly ‘banned’, or are some school librarians challenging sexually explicit material and illustrations presented to kids? I don’t want my kids looking up cis gender treatises on sexual positions or bondage equipment either. If they’re going to sneak some information on it anyhow, don’t make it easier, popular or ‘endorsed’.
The below interview with the author (who was assigned female legal sex at birth) is filled with self-indulgent attention-seeking statements such as
“I can’t decide if I’m a girl who feels kind of like a boy or like a gay man trapped in a girl’s body or if I’m, like, a boy but in a very feminine way, or, like, am I a lesbian?”
Saying you are “a gay man trapped in a girl’s body” is one of the most telling statements of the modern era. You can translate this as a person with a vagina interested in persons with cocks in modern parlance, rather than girls and boys. It’s a lame and convoluted way of trying to avoid using words like heterosexual interest, because that’s oh so boring in 2022 and won’t get a book published. Is a book like this out to illuminate, or cause confusion in the susceptible?
The interview also has a mournful description of the trauma of getting a gynecologic exam and PAP smear.
“I don’t enjoy being reminded about this part of my body. And half of it is just literal physical pain.”
Sorry to remind you of that, and also to smokers who are getting a chest x ray. And I imagine worse pain comes further in life than a pap smear. But I’m inspired to help youth myself in a similarly explicit children’s book, “Dad gets a prostate exam” and its followup, “Turn your head and cough”.
https://www.npr.org/2023/01/04/1146866267/banned-books-maia-kobabe-explores-gender-identity-in-gender-queer
Jim Goad wrote: Is your screen handle by any chance inspired by Wimpy from the Popeye cartoons: “I’d gladly pay you Tuesday for a …”?
The thread ran out of replies, so I’m answering here:
Yes.
@”Buttercup”:
From Gov.UK
“Apply for a Gender Recognition Certificate
You can apply if you meet all of the following requirements:
you’re aged 18 or over…
If you’ve got a Gender Recognition Certificate or something similar from an approved country or territory, you only need to meet the following requirements:
you’re aged 18 or over…”
Brett was 16. I noted his legal name, and you’ve been throwing a fit over it for a week now.
Ah yes, posting two comments of disagreement and a further three replies is “throwing a fit.” This is ridiculous, you attacked my tone as being womanly, like what, are women barred from commenting at Counter-Currents? Is there a male hierarchy in place for commentors I wasn’t aware of? Write a socially conservative reactionary article, then mad about being criticised by social progressives, whatever.
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