Bow Before Your Boob-Stealing Overlords

[Ed: I think the above represents the Real Kevin D Williamson. Can”t find a picture of the dude with hair]

First article that you could say “Sorry, Hermione, you have a dick now” about and not be talking about fan-fiction

Kevin D. Williamson, National Review of the Transphobic Menace:

A New York State of Dysphoria

Oh goody, goody, goody. We have not covered brilliant biologist (author of the fabulous treatise on how manly sperm creates more boys) and winner of the Totally Believable Straight Person Disguise Award ten years running, Kevin D. Williamson in far too long here.

In fact, this is one of the posts that had me spinning my wheels a little bit, because there has been an outpouring of posts that were either deliberately calculated to push me past the breaking point of snark (mostly arguing that rape is totally fictional and all bitches lie about it, that torture was the A+ greatest thing and now the terrorists will win because we know about it, that black people totes deserve to be shot because they are intemperate in complaining about it, or just crowing on and on about how the latest election means that Obama is totes going to be Impeached any day now for insert made-up crime here) or prime meaty pieces of transphobic bullshittery responding to the slightly greater than average visibility of trans* voices of late.

And not wanting to make the blog an all-trans* or all incoherent rant blog, I instead chose total radio silence and getting sucked into my day job…

Perhaps I should rethink my concerns in the future.

But hey, for those of you who are worried about this turning into yet another episode of Ornery Aunt Cerberus eviscerating the transphobes, I must note that this is destined to be somewhat special.

After all, this is no ordinary trans*-fearing asshole turning to tired “biological” arguments based on a misinterpretation of an inadequate Health class ages past, this is Kevin D. Williamson, a man whose understanding of basic biology is second to none… because people with literally no understanding of biology can probably be trusted to be more accurate and pertaining to reality.

This is a man who literally believes you can make more boys by being ultra-manly and that the argument of Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin was the work of of a shmot guy, donchaknow.

I’d compare his intellect to mold, but I fear I would be selling the protist and fungi kingdoms short.

So yeah, when he pumps himself up for the “well, you see the reality of biology is…” pose so beloved by ignorant transphobes it holds an extra degree of… well, I should really let you see for yourself.

Shorter (or the last port before Jungle): In a world where we still fail to understand the definition of insurance, these little changes mean we’ll be thrust into an oppressive New York Times led dystopia where innocent God-fearing folks will be thrown in jail, innocent words will be brutalized in the street, and I may one day have to acknowledge the humanity of another person. WOE THE HUMANITY!!!!

And in case you were worried it wouldn’t reach the correct proportion of batshit self-martyrdom, may I point you no further than the tagline below the title.

Sex changes go from permissible to mandatory in a single generation.

Yes, wingnuts, it’s mandatory now. For everyone. Say goodbye to your precious penii, gentlemen, the trans* council of Rigel VI hath decided it’s pussies for all!*

The regimen of surgical mutilation

I wonder how much life could be improved if surgery wasn’t this sanitized, hidden-away thing or only shown in gross-out action sequences of self-medicating badassery or horror movie “doctor” plots.

Yes, idiots of the world, surgery is gross. It’s bloody and messy, and requires seeing the internal world that is so often covered by our epidermis. And it’s understandable that we would be horrified by it. There’s a good social reason to become concerned or frightened of bloody internal anatomy. If we see it as a normal part of the day, it means someone’s day has gone horribly wrong. Bones piercing skin in brutal fractures, nasty gashes, or people laid open. Blood is a sign of injury and injury is a sign of something going wrong. We want to empathize. We want to stay wary of whatever caused it. It is a symptom of our mortality and a brutal reminder that we are all on the inside, bones and muscles, and organs, and blood.

So, we don’t like seeing the necessary procedures that help put us right when things go wrong. That open us up, go rooting around, and fix what needed fixing before stitching it back up. We hide it away and make it all layers of sheets and clean-gloved men going “stat” and off-panel.

Which is probably good in not desensitizing to just how horrible things like war and death and blood can be, but it also means that the assholes of the world have the greatest go-to in making medicine sound terrifying.

A bloody picture of an abortion looks like any other surgical procedure, hell, less gruesome in fact**, but a little theatricality and that picture can serve as something to intimidate and frighten the dimwitted.

So it is no surprise we get the same with trans*-related surgeries. The careful medical intervention to a piece of non-sentient flesh becomes a mutilation complete with horror-movie connotations of innocent victims pureed under the saw blades, the desperate penis crying out in stock footage scream.

And it becomes hilarious that this is by this point a rote deception, because there is no trans*-related surgery that is out of left-field to normal surgical procedure and many are things that a cis-person may very well encounter in their life (hysterectomy, double mastectomy, orchidectomy).

And extra hilarious when you realize that the surgeries these idiots apparently spend a good 50% of their runtime obsessing about plays an increasingly smaller role in the actual trans* community. Not only are those who pursue any form of transition not the sum total of the trans* spectrum, but for those who do, “sex alignment surgery” is not precisely the all-encompassing milestone it once was. It can be nice. It can be desired by those who want to pursue it. It can be celebrated and have great personal significance.

But for those in the trans* spectrum who wish to undergo transition, its impact on one’s day to day life is far less dramatic and far less critical for resolving dysphoria than being regularly called by the correct pronouns or a shot every couple of months or some pills every day.

But then, I’m sure it’s much harder to make a pill and a half of spirotone and three pills of estrogen every night before bed time sound quite as terrifying as MUTILATION and the fantasy of ball sacs crying in pain as they are cut in twain.

Well, maybe if that half-pill was cut with SATAN!!!! Dun dun dun dun!

that until the day before yesterday went by the name “sex-change operation” — the catechists now instruct us to call it “gender-confirmation surgery”

Man, bigots really don’t hide very well the fact that what really pisses them off is the notion of change, do they?***

WHAT? Language changes??? Since when? I thought we all still went forsooth and wherefore. Those blasted young whipper-snappers and their non-ruffled collars ruining it for everyone! I must retire to the burgher to relate my complaints on this dreadful occurrence.

— has undergone a remarkable evolution: from banned to fringe to tolerated to celebrated

It’s really true. Not only are gender-confirming surgeries widely celebrated, but all surgeries are widely celebrated now thanks to By-Law 478 (the one after bros before hos). Definitely threw me for a loop the time I got my tonsils taken out and came to in the middle of an impromptu Mardi Gras celebration. Now, I’m not entirely sure why the beads are now somehow necessary to medical procedures, but my surgeon Dr. Brofist ensured me that was the case.

to federally subsidized under Medicare

Oh no… that’s… how insurance works.

Every single person doesn’t need every single thing that’s covered by an insurance plan. I after all will not ever need the boner pills that Kevin D. Williamson and his conservative ilk put in a weekly order for. Nor am I currently suffering from any medical condition requiring hospitalization at the moment, but then I don’t think that Insurance should be wholly fixated on what I need and only what I need at any given point.

Unlike conservatives I’m not an obsessed narcissist and don’t think that an insurance plan’s job is to wholly respond only to my needs and my poor guesstimates of what I’ll need in the future and I’m glad that my insurance provider covers a whole raft of situations I’ll hopefully never encounter.

And on a more personal note, I’m eternally grateful that raksafraskin’ medicare big government blarg was there to subsidize my health care a little under a year ago, because it damn well saved my life. Finally having access to a Primary Care Physician for the first time since I lived in Denmark? Being treated like a human being by my care provider? No longer having to hop around to get my hormones? Actually having access to a psychologist and a psychiatrist in one of the darkest periods of my life? Yeah, that little thing that Kevin and the other “I’ve never had to work a day in my life” assholes was vitally important and likely was the only thing that kept me from completing slipping off the edge.

Little things that mean so little to those not living it can be the entire world to another. A policy interpretation going one way versus another in my state meant my life was saved and I had access to medical care when I needed it most. Similarly, changes like New York no longer requiring surgery to change legal sex or to New York’s medicare coverage will mean the literal difference between a large number of trans* people dying on the street. Policies like Holder actually enforcing anti-discrimination laws for trans* people means maybe the horror of my last year is one step closer to never happening again.

And you bet your ass if they were the ones holding on the edge needing that little change to survive there would be no end to the whoopin’ and screamin’ and demanding the State woosh in and help them out, because that’s what they already do when the slightest of inconveniences dare invade their perfect suburban encampment.

And that might very well be the biggest difference politically between wingnuts and the rest of us. That they really do think the world should solely revolve around them and their petulant needs and the whole edifice of cooperative effort that is required to keep society running should serve them and only them.

And I’m not sure that is viable in the long term, because it turns out most people aren’t super keen on suffering and dying so that some asshole somewhere can feel more important than they are.

to obligatory in Andrew Cuomo’s New York,

Cislog Day 39: Food supplies running low. The trans* hordes continue to circle below. All the shops have already been converted to hormone suppliers and binder trade programs. We may very well be the last cis people in this state, but I worry that the infection is spreading. My wife has already confided that she hates looking in the mirror because her reflection looks too feminine and I think she might be wearing multiple layers. She says its too cold for one, but it may be a sign of the infection. And… and… God help me… I couldn’t look down when I peed this morning… Why Andrea Cuomo? Why did you release your trans* plague on us?

with the governor announcing that insurance companies operating under his thumb will be obliged to pay for procedures relating to what the American Psychiatric Association calls “gender dysphoria.”

Yeah, what do a bunch of namby pamby “psychiatrists” know about supposed “medical conditions”. Pfft, they’re not doctors like Dr. Phil!

And again, yes, insurance. If it is medicine, if it is a medically supported procedure, if it is a reccommended surgical procedure, insurance companies should fucking pay for it, because that’s the whole point of their existence. To pay for medical issues when they arrive. That’s what they collect their premiums and copays for.

And it should be that way. It is not a fun idea to be rushed to the hospital only to find the appendix is not on the approved list, so sorry, buddy, no life saving appendectomy for you. And that sadly was what we had in America for the longest time. Insurance companies that claimed to be there for medical care, but had fleets of excuses on why this and that wasn’t covered, so surprise, that life-saving surgery just made the whole family bankrupt and homeless.

But then, I suppose soulless machines don’t need medical care, so what do they care if the meatbags rot and die on their watch. It’s not like-It’s not like-It’s not like they caaan breeeeak doooooooo…

WAAH! Cover robot repairs for freeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!! NOWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!

For example, in the case of a woman who wishes to live as if she were a man,

Of course it is. Literally every example a transphobe ever brings out is transsexual women so let’s here the usual chest…nuts… wait… could it be?

No. It couldn’t possibly…

Do we actually have the first occurrence of a transphobe actually acknowledging the existence of transsexual MEN in one of their bigoted ignorant rants?!?!? I mean, outside of a quick aside before drifting back to hand-wringing about men sneaking into women’s restrooms and the like?

Holy fuckberries and cream. I’m genuinely impressed.

Okay, Kevin, you’ve got my attention, where are you going with this?

insurance companies may not decline to pay for procedures such as elective mastectomy — which is to say, for the surgical removal of perfectly healthy organs

… You know, any other writer and I’d write this off as some juvenile “Save the Boobies” browhine about how “perfectly good chicks” are getting rid of their breasts as if a person’s mammary tissue was a precious gift that must be preserved even at risk of death for the good of boners everywhere…

But it’s Kevin D. Williamson, whose reading on the gaydar could probably be used to knock a clay pigeon out of the sky in an Olympic shooting event. As such, I’m more willing to put my money on this being a statement of fear that a guy he picks up in a truck stop bathroom might still come with original plumbing, thus putting his penis in dangerous proximity to a vagina for the first time in his life…

And to that fear, I answer. Oh, Kevin, you really, really don’t have to worry about that. No self-respecting transman is ever going to put their junk anywhere within 2 zip codes of yours.

— on the grounds that such procedures are cosmetic, which of course is, categorically, precisely what they are.

Ungh, but whine, they’re not really necessary. And ungh, why can’t my beard get her breast implants covered if trans*-guys can cut theirs off. It’s not fair. Ungh. Imma stamp my feet until you fix this.

That Governor Cuomo believes himself entitled to impose this by fiat has gone unremarked-upon in New York, the servile population of which has accustomed itself to strongman rule in both the capital and the principal city.

Laws? Pfft, mere trifling inconveniences if we don’t like the law or a Democrat passes them.

Also, seriously, the more wingnuts whine that laws they don’t like are being passed is the equivalent of feudal edicts, the more I want to force them to suffer a single day in a feudal simulation as peasants and experience what a “fiat” decision actually feels like.

Also, seriously, asshole hack writers. Please, for the love of Bob, stop treating your subby little erotic fantasies as reality. We’ve had enough hack pieces breathlessly extolling the inherent dominant power of silver foxes and whiny groveling pieces about how the Big Bad Government is coming down on you hard. Either rent a dominatrix or just fucking self-publish your 50 Shades Fanfiction. Actually… I wouldn’t wish you on even the most assholic sex worker so… yeah, fanfiction.

As a great man* once said, the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward mandatory insurance coverage for elective genital amputation.

No, no, the best part is where the asterix leads:

*Well, one never knows, now does one?

I honestly have no idea what I love most about this. The flippant bit of passive-aggression attempting to show those damn Social Justice Warr~riors what for with their little quotes about how history bends towards justice. The way it tries to weaponize being trans*, ungh, it might have turned out some of our great men could have been great women and doesn’t that disturb you like it does me? Or the way it inadvertently demonstrates the way most wingnut arguments go (oh, totally some authority somewhere totally supports me, honest, yeah, but it’s invisible and only talks to me and only a smart person would know it and anyways you’re wrong). Or maybe the original bit which tries like hell to be all pissy and “fierce” about those damn trannies killing innocent penii and uteruses, but just ends up looking like the dimwitted and bitter prat that he is.

But no, I’m going to have to go with the little wink and nod where he tries to imply that he is a great man, cause… yeah. All the inherent comedy on that one.

The American Psychiatric Association has a funny relationship with “gender dysphoria.”

Whaaaaaaaaa??? The medical field can change its mind when presented with new evidence? Bu-bu-but that’s not how our Sunday School teacher does it! That’s why she still teaches us that God wants to keep black people as slaves and women are legally and morally property who should be raped by their husband’s brothers if their husband is to die!****

It was, until the most recent revision of the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders, known as “gender-identity disorder,” and the word “disorder” is a two-edged sword: In some cases, people so diagnosed have had the diagnosis used against them, for example in custody disputes; at the same time, activists quietly welcome its continued classification as a “disorder,” because, as Governor Cuomo reminds us, cosmetic procedures attached to a medical diagnosis need no longer be considered cosmetic procedures, and so insurance companies can be brought under political discipline. Similarly, the diagnosis gives weight to nondiscrimination rules and the like. As Dana Beyer, a transgender advocate and failed Democratic political candidate in Maryland (“Gay incumbent fends off transgender challenger,” the headline read), “A right-winger can’t go out and say all trans people are mentally ill. . . . It no longer matters what your body looks like, what you want to do to it — all that is irrelevant as far as the APA goes.”

Yeah, that’s pretty much the internal debate on why it’s still listed as a psychiatric condition wrapped up in a little bow right there. Good eyes. Congratulations.

Just like we wouldn’t say a burn victim receiving facial reconstruction surgery was being all cosmetic and MAN are you pissed you had to pay out of pocket for your trophy beard’s tit augmentation aren’t you?

As goes the APA . . .

So goes the established medical community and the guidelines encouraged to practicing psychologists and psychiatrists with regards to medicine and treatment protocols as well as diagnosis?

Um… I know this is supposed to hang all sinister and I’m usually really good at catching exactly where the crazy winds are blowing in a wingnut rant, but this whole section fills me with an absolute feeling of “annnnnnd????”

I mean, I get that it’s probably just dog-whistling “grr, this group accepts trans* people, hate them and refuse your mentally ill children psychiatric care because look at these filthy liberal doctors”, which A) speaking as a teacher of a number of the children of these parents, “fuck you, your daughter/son needs anti-depressants before they hurt themselves” and B) Pfft.

Just pfft. Because holy shisno is it hilarious to watch these idiots decide more and more organizations and parts of society are just in on the conspiracy to make them grow the fuck up. What’s that? All the scienamatists and doctors and whatnot say it’s the case, well, then they must all be bowing to pressure from Big Oppressed Minority. We won’t heed their lies.

And that’s fucking hilarious of a twitch most of the time, but especially hilarious once their “conspiracy targets” start becoming entire swaths of the medical and scientific communities. Yes, all the psychiatrists and psychologists of the world and banded together to invent a fake condition just to rob you of your precious titty supply. Good catch. And all the scientists of the world are lying about global warming because Sierra Club has more money and political power than established global oil conglomerates.

The DSM characterizes gender dysphoria as “a marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and assigned gender.”

Indeed. It fucking sucks. Want to trade places on that experience?

That “assigned” is a textbook example of begging the question,

Not to, erm, beg the question, but… how?

How in bloody blazes does “assigned gender” “beg a question” in any logical fallacy understanding of that term? It’s not exactly the Cavuto mark here. In fact, it’s rather blunt in what it describes. Assigned gender. The gender you were assigned. I.e. the gender that is plastered all over your driver’s license and birth certificate. I.e. the gender the doctor sort of guessed at based on how his genitals looked to them when you were pooped out.

It’s rather specific and not really all that counter-intuitive to discern or require much in the way of learning to suss out.

And I could go on about what exactly he thinks an assigned gender is and who has it, because his following sentences make it abundantly clear that he has no fucking idea what any of these words mean. But I won’t, because I think as the last paragraph proves, this isn’t about whether he knows or doesn’t know what any of these words mean (he doesn’t).

But rather a demonstration of how idiots who want to pump themselves up on how manly and “logical” they are will just sort of throw words they’ve been called in the past out as some sort of trump card. Like a gamergator ranting about how calling out sexism in video games is rape culture, because they heard that term once and assume it’s something feminists use in place of the word bad. So here we get this hilarious bit where he calls it “begging the question” because someone called him out on a Cavuto mark once and damnitt this is his chance to stick it to some strawliberal somewhere (see also his butchering of the “arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice” saying).

but the defining characteristic of gender dysphoria — and the defining characteristic of the public discussion of it — is the conflation of the objective and the subjective.

…

A) Mmmhmm, which is something wingnuts never ever do with regards to trying to force the rest of the universe to pertain to the delusion of how the world works they’ve decided to cling to?

B) Ugh, I hated this fucking faux-macho anti-science “hurrr, feelings aren’t real and anyone who thinks so is a faggot” shit years ago and I hate it even more now that not only most of my friends are suffering from one or more mental health issues but almost 100% of my students are as well. Especially since this sort of willful denialism hurts real people. And it’s one thing when these assholes are shit-talking mental health and claiming it’s not real and making my friends feel like shit. It’s a whole ‘nother thing when I’m sitting across the table from a kid who fucking needs anti-depressants and a Bob damn therapist in the worst possible way, but has no access to them, because they are still a minor and their dimwitted parents swallow this shit and think that mental health is simply an issue of “not trying hard enough not to be down”.

Cause yeah, newsflash assholes, this is why your kids try and kill themselves. This is why they have difficulty getting out of bed. Because you are too fucking wrapped up in Horatio Alger delusions of how brains work to fucking do the bare minimum and believe your fucking kid about how their head works! So yeah… Fuck. You.

C) Okay, calmer place and… pfft, oh you transphobes are always so cute with your “genitals = destiny” thing because you are so utterly proud of your little argument in the exact same ways you were so proud of your “but gay people can’t get married because how do kids” bullshittery. And it’s so tragicomic that you can’t fucking see how it is a thin sheet of wet paper that you’ve chosen to stand on. Fuck, by your logic, a woman ceases to be a woman if she gets a hysterectomy or a masectomy for cancer or a man needs to get an orchidectomy or a prostate removal for same.

And it really does underline how this thin bridge of secondary sex characteristics you want to defend as the bottom line isn’t really a bridge. Cause see, I’ve got tits. My transmen friends? Most of them have got a dick and a flat chest and a hairy chin. Which is why you retreat back to chromosomes when called out, but there’s the rub, inn’it? No one checked chromosomes for any of this shit and even if it did, it would still run smack dab into the problem of mental sex, not to mention intersex (and given you’re desperate desire to pretend that men and women are separated by a gulf a mile wide, you really don’t ever want to have to acknowledge that whole can of worms).

And yeah, I know, I know you are so so desperate to hand-wave away our existence so that you can go back to pretending we’re predatory cross-dressers trying to trick straight guys or in your case “straight” guys, but sorry buddy. We exist. So you’re just gonna have to fucking shut up and deal.

“Dysphoria” itself is a neologism that simply means a bad feeling,

Dude. I will trade you my dysphoria in a heart beat. If you really think it’s a “bad feeling” and nothing more and it’s the sweet ticket to free stuff, then by george, I will hand over this experience to you and you can get that sweet lucrative surgery access you think we’re scamming off you.

Cause buddy, it ain’t no “bad feeling”. It’s not being able to look at yourself in the mirror for most of your life. It’s being crippled with depression to the point where others need to hide the sharp objects because someone touched you wrong or a period started or a hard-on crept up on you. It’s being left in a panic state constantly, unendingly because people keep calling you the wrong pronoun (and for those that say whatever, think about being called the different gender and treated as the wrong gender, all day, every day, always and now think about how you have friends who’ll flip the table if they are ever teasingly called a girl or a boy once). It’s not being able to be intimate with the ones you love because your naked body is wrong. It’s dealing with all manner of discrimination and violence and rape and hatred and people actively trying to take away what little rights you have, because all that is better and less painful than what dysphoria brings. It’s trying over and over again to pretend you’re something you are not, failing and failing to get it right, because you aren’t. And you’re never going to be and the longer you keep pretending to be the gender that makes “everyone else happy”, the one the doctors guessed you would be at birth, the more definite it is that you’re just going to check out from this world once and for all.

And worst of all, it’s not even realizing how fucked up you have really gotten with dysphoria because everyone told you that was natural to feel, because some fucking doctor took a look at your junk and guessed wrong. When you only ever realize what that happiness feeling, that ease of mind feeling everyone else gets when you finally are recognized for who you are and are allowed to fully participate.

But hey, I’m sure you’ll deal great with all that.

After all, we’re a bunch of whiners and it’s just a “bad feeling”.

and such is the power of contemporary sentimentalism that a feeling intensely bad enough is taken to reorganize reality: A cosmetic mastectomy is not a cosmetic mastectomy if one wants rid of one’s breasts badly enough. What was cosmetic is therapeutic, what was female is male. Presto-change-o.

Poof. Who was responsible for this transition? Why, a wizard did it of course!

Of course, reality is not reorganized — not officially — until the New York Times says it is,

Oh, I’m terribly sorry, by wizard, I apparently meant journalist… Wait, sorry, what???

and the newspaper has enthusiastically adopted the Orwellian abuse of the English language necessitated by participating in this modish joint delusion.

They’re all in on the conspiracy don’t you see? The doctors. The lawmakers. The fake trans* people. The newspapers. They’re all in on it. All to make me think that my weenus doesn’t protect me from the terrifying femininity that risks to rob me of my manly spiritual essence. You got to watch out for them. They’re all out to get me.

Also wingnuts claiming other people are deluded. Funniest thing ever or funniest thing EVER?

Lee Albertorio felt like a man trapped in a woman’s body. After serving in the Air Force, he began taking hormones, which deepened his voice and made his physique more masculine. He changed his passport to reflect that he was male, and last year he decided to have a mastectomy, known as top surgery. But his insurance company told him the operation was cosmetic and refused to cover it. This being the New York Times, there is no indication that the subject is a biologically female human being — a woman — who is undergoing a series of procedures that will help enable her to cultivate for herself and for the general public the illusion that she is a biologically male human being — a man.

Wow. Are we almost the entire way through this with no rants about the evil transwomen and solely examples of trans* men? Cause kudo points for awareness. And zero points for adequately communicating terror to anyone other than your vagina-fearing brethren, because the sad truth about the world is that while trans* women can evoke fear or serve as punchlines, trans* men are often just robbed of identity, treated like sad trombones or like some “duh obvious” tagline to a sexist assumption of how everyone wants to have the power of a man and be men (I’m looking at you “penis envy” pseudoscience).

But hey, kudos for at least making the effort to expand the transphobia oeuvre of work beyond the traditional “but man in dress watch ur daughter pee” bullshit. Really shows… effort. Let’s go with effort.

Oh, and by the way, no points for the “deceiver” trope. Cause, there’s overplayed and then there’s somebody gon’ shoot the jukebox if it comes on one more damn time.

The Times is hardly alone in this: The Daily Mail, reporting on a couple’s decision to “correct” the birth announcement of their daughter (“He informs us that we were mistaken . . . We would now like to present our wonderful son”) plays the same game, describing the two as “the parents of a 19-year-old man.”

Oh yeah, I saw that announcement. It was fucking adorable. I really love it when a trans* person has loving supportive parents, because sadly for too many of us, that isn’t usually the case (cough cough, fuck my “I want to send you to reparative therapy” Dad, cough cough).

…

Oh, I’m terribly sorry, did you want me to respond to the argument as well? I’ll definitely get on that when he fucking gets around to MAKING ONE! I mean, holy fuckledongs Batman, but this entire post is just him stating reality with scary background music and waving his fingers and going “wooooooo” from time to time as if that somehow hand waves away a pesky reality he desperately does not want to believe in.

Because if trans* people are real. If the separation between genders is not a gaping chasm, then the fragile little Bearded Kingdom he has manufactured with desperate attempts at masculinity really might just be the sand it always was and all those years he spent running away from the fact that he’s a slightly femme gay guy will seem just as wasted and worthless as they were.

And he just can’t face up to that. Not now. Possibly, sadly for him, not ever. Ah well, off I go to extort those free surgeries from job creators and turn everyone trans* (hey, as long as everyone is getting those nifty superpowers my ex supposedly had, I might as well use them, now I’m off to give all of Congress dysphoria.)

And in case you didn’t think we were about to get Harry Potter in here.

It is fitting that this intellectual regression into primitive magical thinking — remove the breasts, say the necessary words,

Oh, yeah, broomsticks and Quiditch time!*****

and a woman is confirmed as a man — has been accompanied by a parallel regression in the use of the English language — women are “he,” men are “she,” cosmetic is “therapeutic” — and that all this regress goes under the name of “progress.”

Me no like change. Me want stop the world and wait for you.

This will end badly.

In a world… where trans* people have equal rights…

Uh… er… um… sorry, not sure where the dystopia comes in on that. Wait!

In a world… where some people have access to surgeries, treatment, and social protections that allow them to comfortably live their life… uh… er… he may occasionally walk down the street opposite a trans* person that isn’t fearing for their lives if they’re not stealth?

Oh noes… poor baby… there there.

Activists have suggested, energetically, that I should be imprisoned on hate-crimes charges for refusing to follow the pronoun etiquette they demand when it comes to trans people.

OH MY BOB! What a nightmarish scenario…that will never ever happen.

But hey, a trans* person can still be thrown in jail for walking down the street, because it “clearly means they are a sex worker” and we are routinely thrown out of housing and fired from jobs, and fucking murdered, even when it’s illegal simply for existing. And let’s not forget that a steady atmosphere of poisonous hateful delusional bullshit like yours is what directly leads to trans* kids ending up on the streets or in a grave, because people listen and internalize and treat them lesser for it.

But, I’m sorry to take the wood from your cross before you were finished. Do go on about how the evil trannies are going to throw you in jail just because you are, yanno, encouraging violence against them. I like funny stories. They help when people casually discuss whether or not they are going to murder me today.******

That is the nature of such sexual theater in the 21st century:

I love the oral matinee.

What was permissible in Mario Cuomo’s New York is obligatory in Andrew Cuomo’s.

Ha ha, those delusional crazy bitches who think they’re men, amirite fellas? But seriously, the psychologists and the government are all in on a secret experiment to turn us all trans* and steal our penii and they are totally going to throw me in jail any minute now for exposing their secret plots.

BEWARE THE FLUORIDE IN THE DRINKING WATER, IT IS STEALING YOUR PRECIOUS SPERM!

AIEEEEEEEE!

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. I’d love to imagine what this conspiracy is actually supposed to look like. Like is it evil feminazis creeping into guy’s houses and cutting off all the dingdongs and the funbags and forcing all the men to start doing the dishes and raising the kids? Cause I feel we’re really close to some trippy sci-fi shit if we can only harness the crazy. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

* Seriously, though, it is amazing how all-or-nothing wingnut minds work. Something is either forbidden or mandatory. There is no middle ground, because an option being available for some, means it exists, means one can think about which choice is best, means that they or someone close to them might consider that choice and choose differently than them, leaving them slightly less protected by the herd of conformity. A bunch of damaged fucks, clinging to the majority way of being, even if the options are killing them, simply because they are too scared and have wasted too much of their life being scared of their being any other way they could have been. I’d pity it if they didn’t work so Bob-damned hard at making my life and the lives of so many close to me as miserable as they possibly can.

** My ex used to work a job designing websites for plastic surgeons. She saw enough images of exactly what each step of a breast implant surgery or facial reconstruction surgery looks like to make Saw look like a Care Bears movie.

*** It’s pretty much the point at which ignorance due to privilege becomes outright harm. When the notion that the world is bigger than you were taught it was and now you must learn how to cope is resisted simply because you were never expected to before and having to do the bare minimum of work feels like the most unfair and cruel imposition.

And yet it happens over and over again. For so many, the mere notion that today can be slightly different from yesterday and they may have to adapt to that in the least intrusive to their daily life way possible is a call to action and worthy of far more effort to scream no over and over again into that good night than to do the bare minimum of effort. Simply because they’ve been used to the world revolving around them and they can’t accept the notion of sharing this planet with anyone else.

**** Pretty much every angry wingnut’s arguments against scientific consensus boil down to this. “Real knowledge” is inerrant and occurs once so that they can learn it as children and never have to think again. Anything else can be dismissed. Which makes their figuring out enough about the internet to vomit their refuse on to it absolutely fascinating to study in its dissonance.

***** “You’re transgender, Harriet!”

“Oh… oh… huh… well fuck.”

****** Yeah, somehow, I have difficulty overlooking that little cherry on the sundae that is my life. Fucking creeper straight boys and their Bob damn fetishization of lesbians. And double fuck you to their fucked up beliefs that we are personally responsible to the state of their boners.