Bonfire of the Tranities

Posted By Spencer J. Quinn On In North American New Right | Comments Disabled

[1]1,590 words

We might be at a critical point in history. It is possible that the Left’s vilification of all things they dislike has reached its zenith, and will soon begin its downward arc towards a more realistic understanding of history. What’s driving it is the rise of transgenderism and its odious step-sibling, transgender identity politics.

It’s not enough for minority identity groups these days to be non-white; they must also be anti-white and claim a portion of that Holy Grail of victimhood which certifies that their people were oppressed by those awful whites. Though Jews, blacks, and Muslims fight over that cherished bit of stemware, now trans people have been horning their way into the action — and with unexpected results.

Unlike the nowadays plain vanilla gays and lesbians, who historically had a closet door they could open or close when necessary, transgender people tend to be permanent outsiders. You’re not going to easily fit in with any traditional society after a sex-change operation. And if you advocate for such procedures, especially for children, then there is no society based on any sort of traditional values that won’t try to stop you.

Transgender people realize this, of course. In grasping for anything that can validate their wished-for status as a real and oppressed identity group, they have landed upon the ultimate bugbear against which to define themselves: the Nazis.

They are not incorrect about this. Nazi Germany did crack down on transgenderism, but only after the practice enjoyed a golden age during the Weimar period. This was largely due to the work of Jewish sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, who promoted the idea that those who do not fit into the binary categories of male and female belong to a “third sex” (or Geschlecht).

According to Scientific American [2]:

Hirschfeld’s study of sexual intermediaries was no trend or fad; instead it was a recognition that people may be born with a nature contrary to their assigned gender. And in cases where the desire to live as the opposite sex was strong, he thought science ought to provide a means of transition. He purchased a Berlin villa in early 1919 and opened the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (the Institute for Sexual Research) on July 6. By 1930 it would perform the first modern gender-affirmation surgeries in the world.

Beyond sex-change surgeries, Hirschfeld’s institute provided sex education, encouraged contraception, and conducted research on gender and sexuality. As a political activist, Hirschfeld worked to overturn Paragraph 175 of the German criminal code that banned homosexuality. He also coined the term “transvestite” and printed identity cards for his crossdressing patients to keep them from being arrested.

The institute would ultimately house an immense library on sexuality, gathered over many years and including rare books and diagrams and protocols for male-to-female (MTF) surgical transition. In addition to psychiatrists for therapy, he had hired Ludwig Levy-Lenz, a gynecologist. Together, with surgeon Erwin Gohrbandt, they performed male-to-female surgery called Genitalumwandlung — literally, “transformation of genitals.” This occurred in stages: castration, penectomy and vaginoplasty. (The institute treated only trans women at this time; female-to-male phalloplasty would not be practiced until the late 1940s.) Patients would also be prescribed hormone therapy, allowing them to grow natural breasts and softer features.

Of course, the Nazis put an end to all of this. On May 6, 1933, slightly more than three months after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor, Brownshirts descended upon the Institute and confiscated over 20,000 volumes from its library, many of which were either rare or irreplaceable. Soon, a great bonfire lit the night for the benefit of high school textbooks and Internet memes everywhere.

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More from Scientific American:

The carnage flickered over German newsreels. It was among the first and largest of the Nazi book burnings. Nazi youth, students and soldiers participated in the destruction, while voiceovers of the footage declared that the German state had committed “the intellectual garbage of the past” to the flames.

As an odd footnote to history, while Hirschfeld, his lover Karl Giese, and Levy-Lenz managed to escape Germany — Hirschfeld died of a heart attack or stroke in 1935, and Giese by suicide in 1938 —  Gohrbandt became a medical adviser for the Luftwaffe, and during the Second World War may have participated in medical experiments at Dachau which investigated “the problems of mortality due to hypothermia,” according to Wikipedia [4].

In recent several years, and especially around the time of the centenary of the founding of Hirschfeld’s Institute, transgender people and Leftists in general began reporting on how those evil Nazis had hindered the progress of the transgender movement. Here are a few examples:

There are two big takeaways, one simple and one not so much. First of all, bombarding ordinary heteronormative people with this will naturally lead them to ask why no one ever told them about this before. Yes, it is common knowledge that the Nazis burned books, but why did so many of our educators never tell us what kind of books the Nazis were hellbent on roasting? Wouldn’t that be an important detail? Wouldn’t it also be important to know that the first and possibly biggest bonfire they ever had focused solely on books about sex, homosexuality, transgenderism, pornography, and whatever passed for queer theory a century ago?

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You can buy Spencer J. Quinn’s young adult novel The No College Club here [12].

Secondly, this push from the transgender lobby will likely not have its intended effect. They are trying to piggyback on the Jews to gain status and credibility as a marginalized community. It may seem a legitimate move for them, since Nazi repression of the trans movement did indeed occur. But transgenderism is so grotesque on its face, and so obviously perverse and malevolent when pushed on children, that when all is said and done, normal people might end up having more sympathy for the Nazis than for transgender activists.

Transgender individuals who transition as adults and pay for their surgery and treatment out of their own pockets are not a threat to civilization. Such a microscopically small number of people are irrelevant and can be pitied. Transgenderism, on the other hand, is a dire threat to civilization. For one thing, it comes with a theory and a body of literature attached to it to give it the imprimatur of academic legitimacy. Its proponents also use the media quite effectively to make it fashionable, especially with the young. It is therefore a proselytizing movement. More importantly, however, it is backed by the deep pockets [13] found in financial institutions such as BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street. These are the people forcing major corporations to push a radically woke agenda in all facets of life.

The point of it is not to make money, but to change civilization for the worse — and transgenderism is on the front line of this change. Vincent James has more on this here [14].

In order for a civilization to be great — that is, to produce lasting contributions to the arts and sciences as well as to foster a just, healthy, and productive society — individuals have to make sacrifices. These include raising children in stable, traditional families, but also making sacrifices meant to improve oneself and one’s community, church, nation, and race. Not all of our desires and fantasies should be acted upon. In fact, most shouldn’t.

What makes transgenderism especially maladaptive is how it encourages the vulnerable, such as children, to indulge their fantasies rather than overcome them. Years ago, most masculine girls or feminine boys would undergo a period of angst in their teens and then grow up to become productive adults. This is similar to the angst that countless heteronormative children endure for a whole host of common and perfectly natural reasons.

Growing up is hard to do, but you do it. And the fewer options you have, the better, because then you will have little choice but to grow up. Transgenderism, like other subversive lifestyles, offers options. But unlike, say, homosexuality, which can be practiced and then abandoned, transgenderism cannot get more radical and effect changes that are utterly permanent and destructive. In the wake of a sex change, a young person is most likely looking at a life without children, without a traditional family, and filled with medical and psychological complications that could hinder a productive life. What great civilization could survive with a critical mass of citizens such as that?

All because you feel a secret thrill when you put on your mother’s clothing or because your boy crush in high school started dating that little blonde girl you know is prettier and skinnier than you will ever be.

Are these good reasons to inject a child with hormones? Are these good reasons to hack off and graft on body parts? Are these good reasons to fall in league with pedophiles and assume children have the agency to make life-altering changes to begin with? We might as well offer our children heroin as a balm for their troubles.

Hopefully ordinary people will soon insist that their lawmakers stop this menace in its tracks. Otherwise, when they realize what is really going on due to transgender propaganda backfiring all around them, they may decide to give the Nazis a second look.

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