Ever since Lady Godiva added a whole new meaning to bareback riding, it has been known that boys will go to extraordinary lengths to catch a stealthy glimpse of naked female flesh. (From what I’ve heard, girls are less compulsive about their voyeurism, though the condition does exist.)
Stealth is no longer necessary. A chap can simply declare he’s now female, and the doors of women’s bathhouses, dressing rooms and lavatories will be flung hospitably open.
And if he’s older, he may also wish to satisfy his curiosity in more palpable ways – opportunities now abound. For the government plans to remove even the present risible barriers from the path to gender-bender equality.
One such extant barrier is the need for a doctor to diagnose ‘gender dysphoria’ before sex change is authorised. Dysphoria means dissatisfaction with life, and one would think no medical qualifications are necessary to diagnose this condition.
Such dissatisfaction is an ever-present human condition, and I don’t know anybody who doesn’t suffer from it to one extent or another. Some people are dissatisfied with their families, some with their careers, some with their finances – and evidently some with their sex.
Of course modernity easily oversteps the line separating eudemonic from demonic, and the human herd has been brainwashed to demand happiness as of right. A normal reply to such a demand would be “go home and sort yourself out”.
But our times are far from normal, and every quirk has to be medicalised. Hence fancy terms like dysphoria, or in this case ‘gender dysphoria’. In fact, if any medical discipline tangentially touches upon this condition, it’s psychiatry: men who want to become women or women who want to become men are obviously unhinged.
Whether or not they can be treated is open to debate, but what’s clear is that in any sane society their psychoses wouldn’t be indulged. Sorry about your unhappiness, old boy, but learn to live with it. People throughout history have had to suffer much worse misfortunes than that.
Such a natural response is no longer an option, and out come scalpels, hormone treatments, electrolysis and whatever else is needed for the nutters to be mollycoddled. But at least now it takes a diagnosis and subsequent observation for two years before a boy has something hacked off or a girl something sewn on.
No longer. Under the government’s plans anybody will be able to ‘self-identify’ as belonging to a sex other than the one stated in the birth certificate. No medical tests and observations are necessary. And, to avoid any confusion, the birth certificate will be changed accordingly. Never mind the chromosomes, feel the whim.
The plans haven’t specified whether a simple declaration will suffice or the dysphoric person will actually have to go the whole hog. I suspect it’s the former – hence the endless possibilities for potential Peeping Toms or even rapists.
Predictably, the move is being spearheaded by Minister for Women and Equalities Justine Greening, who has never seen a perversion she couldn’t love, nor many she hasn’t practised. According to her, “This government is committed to building an inclusive society that works for everyone, no matter what their gender or sexuality and today we’re taking the next step forward.” Yes, to perdition.
The very existence of such a post in a Western government is a clinical symptom of collective insanity. Or so one might think. However, in a modern Western government this post isn’t merely possible but indeed crucial.
For equality, moronically understood in the Enlightenment sense of economic, social, political and cultural uniformity, isn’t just the most important desideratum of modernity. It’s rapidly becoming the only one.
That the concept is based on delusions and lies doesn’t matter. In fact, this provenance makes it even more appealing to a civilisation based on the fallacy of inherent human goodness, the same for all.
Anyone whose brain hasn’t been castrated by this wicked ideology will know that the illusion of equality may only have some validity in new-born babies. The moment babies grow up and start making moral choices and enunciating thoughts, they stop being equal.
Some of their moral choices are right, others are wrong. Some of their thoughts are intelligent, others not so much. Some of their acts are commendable, some less so – and some others may be criminal.
At that point people are stratified into multiple layers, and they’re no longer equal. An idiot isn’t equal to an intelligent person, nor a criminal to a law-abiding citizen, nor an ignoramus to a savant, nor – relevant to this subject – a madman to a sane person.
A society that insists on disregarding this transparent truth is itself mad, that much is clear. What interests me, however, isn’t the diagnosis but the aetiology of this particular disease.
The whole ethos of Western modernity is defined by middle-class sensibilities, unrefined and unchecked by the intellectual and moral authority of religion. Left to their own devices, the middle classes naturally gravitate to uniformity.
For intrinsic to a bourgeois is the smug belief that everyone either already is or at least desperately wants to be like him. He himself is the apex of creation (in which he doesn’t believe), meaning anyone inhabiting the infra range below him must be pulled up and, more important, anyone residing in the ultra range above him cut down to size.
Hence, when these people say equal, they really mean the same. They yearn to eliminate the entire pecking order of morality, intellect, attainment, education or, in this case, sanity. I think I’m simply wonderful, you think you’re Napoleon, and we’re both equally entitled to our opinion.
Freedom of choice is thus elevated to an improbably high perch. Since all choices are deemed equally valid, they must all be on the table. A boy who wants to become a girl only has to say that’s what he needs for happiness.
Since happiness is his inalienable right, he’s free to make whatever consumer choice modern science provides. I want a new car, you want a pair of red socks, they want a Mediterranean cruise, he wants a new set of genitalia. All choices are equal because all people are.
And not just people. Animals are now supposed to have rights too, and some of them, such as primates, equal rights to humans. Before long a campaign against speciesism will gather speed, at which point a man may demand to be turned not only into a woman but, say, into a golden retriever.
As far as I know, such a feat is so far beyond science, but not for long. That’s what progress is all about: everything becomes possible sooner or later. And anything possible is equally valid, isn’t it?
A time can’t be far in the future when former sales managers will grow tails and start drinking from puddles, humping table legs and chasing cats. All men are created equal and each is endowed with equally inalienable rights to pursue happiness as he sees fit.
This isn’t reductio ad absurdum. It’s the world we live in.
“The very existence of such a post in a Western government is a clinical symptom of collective insanity.”
Everything will be fine after Akbar and Faisal take over. They will sort things out.
To be fair, AB was writing about sales managers. The poor old salespersons are valiantly clinging on by their fingernails to the idea of being relevant and middle class. Now managers of any kind are the new middle class and do not deserve our sympathy – they can destroy wealth but demand high salaries and bonuses for doing so.
Any genetic trait can vary in its expression, but we need to keep managers and politicians well away from the problem.
I agree with that Noa. Whereas managers could expertly and expensively manage the foibles of the general public and all the those ‘special needs’ policies, they are well known for avoiding personal losses and would tend to retain their dangly bits. So AB could still invite one or two of them to dinner without fear of untoward happenings.