Transgenderism, Conservatism, And Public Restrooms

     Quite a title, eh? No, it’s not that I’m “in a mood.” And it’s not that I’ve suddenly been possessed by the ghost of Dave Mason, who (as far as I know) is still alive. (Famous send-up of the song titles on his first album, Alone Together: “I Couldn’t Think Of A Shorter Title; Could You Think Of A Shorter Title?”) Those three elements are merely the linchpins for today’s little pseudo-Jeremiad...those three, and this article forwarded to me by my favorite Twenty-First Century Jeremiah, Pascal:

     There’s a few articles out there now on a ‘conservative trans woman’ who apparently said a few things about the transgender idiot in Canada that got offended when a bunch of women wouldn’t wax his…..ya know:

     Conservative and transgender…um….what?

     The [first] I heard of this was from Steve Deace, who noticed this in his timeline and had a similar reaction:

     I agree with him completely. You can’t just abandon the most basic essence of our humanity and call yourself a conservative.

     Now, I don’t know the first thing about Steve Deace. I’m not familiar with his published opinions or other work (if any). And the cited article is “published by The Right Scoop,” so I must treat it as unsigned. But the sloppy thinking exemplified in the above should be a lesson to anyone who presumes to comment on a complex cultural and sociopolitical issue that deserves a radical simplification (and right BLEEP!ing now, at that).

     Close your tray tables, return your seats to the fully upright position, and buckle yourself in securely, Gentle Reader; this ride’s about to get bumpy.

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     It’s become my preference, in these latter years of my life and swiftly waning tolerance for poor thinking, to explore the thornier subjects in a fictional context. Indeed, that preference is the reason for my most recent stories and novels:

• The Athene Academy Collection
• Innocents
• Experiences
• The Wise and the Mad

     Stories have power, both explanatory and persuasive, that exceeds the power of argument and exposition. No matter its premises nor its setting, to be entertaining and edifying a story must show us plausible characters embroiled in the solution of important problems – important to them, at any rate – in a fashion we can imagine real people embracing in the real world. Mind you, they might fail. They might incur consequences that cost them severely. But people’s problems and their attempts to confront them are the key to dramatic fiction.

     Transgenderism is an attempt by some persons – about ninety percent of them born male – to solve a particular problem. Their perception of that problem might strike others as irrational, as evidence of an emotional disorder, or what have you. But that’s irrelevant, as is anyone else’s opinion of one person’s personal problems...as long as the afflicted one keeps the problem, its consequences, and the consequences of his chosen solution or palliation entirely to himself.

     Therein lies the rub with transgenderism. Once a phenomenon has been politicized – made into something that demands legislative or judicial intervention – privacy is no longer available to most of those involved.

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     It’s only a few months ago that I last wrote about this subject. At the time I hoped my thoughts would bring some peace to the matter, at least among the Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch. Perhaps that is the case, but it’s clear that society in general remains disturbed by it. The origin of the disturbance is the “trans activist:” he who demands some variety of legal recognition and sanction for the decision to present oneself as the other sex. As anyone with three functioning brain cells could have foreseen (and the Law of Equilibrium guaranteed ab initio), there arose counter-activists: persons utterly opposed to such recognition and determined to prevent it.

     Perspective is important here. Americans have been undergoing various kinds of sex transition for many, many years:

1. Type 1: Some don’t bother with anything but clothing and cosmetics.
2. Type 2: Others purchase depilations and breast implants.
3. Type 3: Still others go for more elaborate surgeries – in some cases, elaborate enough that their birth sex is no longer detectable except by genetic assay.

     Each level has its own costs and consequences, both for the transitioner and for those around him.

     The private consequences, if “private” means “confined strictly to those willing to deal with them,” are tolerable. The public consequences are the problems...but to this point, the problems are effectively confined to pronouns, potties, and “pride marches.”

     I have absolutely no sympathy for the trans activists who demand that their decisions receive social approbation and legal enforcement. I regard them as a bleeding canker on the body politic. They are a curse on their quiet, privacy-inclined brethren. Indeed, were it not for such persons, there would be no issue whatsoever about transgenderism.

     What’s that you say? You want proof? Why certainly, Gentle Reader! Coming right up. I hope you’re braced – and if it makes you “uncomfortable” to have your illusions shattered, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

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     First, have a snippet from The Wise and the Mad:

     Holly crossed the threshold of Costigan’s Pub in a state of unaccustomed uncertainty. She scanned for Walsingham as she rounded into the dining area and spotted him seated in a booth. He rose when he saw her approach. She composed herself as best she could and joined him.
     “Thank you for coming, Holly,” he said. “I must admit I was a bit surprised when you said that you could get away.”
     “Ro and I aren’t joined at the hip, Sir Thomas. We each have some independent pursuits. Besides, on the phone you said you wanted to chat about Unashamed. That’s a conversation for two, not three. And Ro hasn’t read it.”
     “She hasn’t?” he said. “I should have thought she’d read it page by page as it rolled out of your typewriter.”
     “Why would you think so?”
     He frowned. “Isn’t it about her?”
     She laughed. “Heavens, no! I’d never craft a tale around a real person. Especially not someone as dear to me as Ro. It would be an unconscionable invasion of privacy. Here in America that can get you sued.”
     “Hm. It seemed so certain.” A waitress approached bearing an uncorked bottle of Cuvee Rouge and two stemmed glasses. He thanked her, poured a generous amount into a glass, and pushed it toward Holly. “This is from the same winery as that nice Riesling that graced your table yesterday evening.”
     “Thank you.” He filled his own glass. “To your health.” They clinked and sipped.
     “We have these transgenders on the eastern side of the pond as well,” he said, “but ours have made much less noise than yours. An English thing, no doubt. Your protagonist Heidi seems out of the usual run for the U.S. She values her privacy and displays a most attractive reserve. It made her seem English, and quite appealing, despite...” He trailed off.
     Holly grinned. “You were about to say ‘despite her disorder’ or some such, weren’t you?”
     He nodded. “It is a disorder, you know. A man once born cannot become a woman in truth.”
     “Agreed,” Holly said. “Yet it is not impossible for one born a man to present as a woman. Hormones, minor surgery, cosmetics, and diligent study of the personalities and mannerisms of women will suffice for those who already have feminine inclinations and aspects of appearance. For example, you just referred to Heidi as ‘her’ without any apparent tension. That suggests that my portrayal of her in Unashamed was convincingly feminine. I gave her the appropriate appearance, personality, and manner to persuade others to take her as a woman and to treat her as such. I had her respond to such treatment as a woman would respond. An American woman, at any rate. Thus, despite her Y chromosome and male genitalia, she was able to pass in common society as a woman, as was her preference. Only if she had chosen to announce her birth sex to those around her, or to bare her lower body in public, would there have been any conflict about it. Any necessary conflict, that is.”
     He blinked and set his glass on the table.
     “What about love?”
     Holly smiled. “Didn’t Heidi and Roland solve that puzzle adequately?”
     “Yes...yes.” He looked briefly away. “It should not have startled me. We have those on the other side of the Atlantic, as well.”
     Holly took a moment to choose her next words.
     “I’ve been told that a wise man once said that ‘love laughs at hardware.’ I know the sort of love Heidi and Roland chose to enjoy isn’t to everyone’s taste. It’s not that long since it was illegal, both here and in the U.K. Oscar Wilde went to prison for it, did he not?”
     “He did,” Walsingham said.
     “Is sodomy still against the law across the water?”
     “That law was overturned quite some time ago,” he said. “There have been attempts to have it reinstated, but all have failed.”
     “It’s the same here, and just as well,” Holly said. “There can be no pretense of autonomy or personal privacy in a land where the private bodily conduct of consenting individuals is a fit subject for the attention of the police.”
     Walsingham’s face worked. “That is the usual argument. Yet there are many who regard the maintenance of society’s moral standards to be of greater importance.”
     “I know. It’s unclear to some how utterly impossible it is to have both individual freedom and legally enforced sexual standards at once. The Constitution was the touchstone for reform here, particularly the Fourth Amendment. But America has groups demanding the return of the old laws, too.”
     She drained her glass. Walsingham gestured at her with the bottle, and she nodded. As he poured she said “As you know, a law that specifies permitted and forbidden modes of sexual conduct would pose a huge problem for Rowenna. Given her bodily configuration—”
     “Her alternatives are celibacy or functioning as a man,” he said. “I’m aware. But it doesn’t appear a problem for you and Rowenna. You are lovers, are you not?”
     Here it comes.
     Holly inclined her head. “Yes, we are.”
     “And it would seem that the tension that arises from making love to what seems a woman but having her function sexually toward you as a man has caused you no difficulty,” he said. “Or no amount you could not surmount.”
     She smiled and saluted him with her glass.
     “I do present rather convincingly as a woman, don’t I, Sir Thomas?”
     He paled.

     I offer no apologies for the length of that segment. Read it. Imagine it being played out in real life – as it is each and every day, by successful transitioners who keep their origins (and their genitalia) to themselves.

     Holly Martinowski, the viewpoint character in the above, is a Type 2 transwoman: clothing, cosmetics, depilations, and breast implants. Sir Thomas Walsingham, her interlocutor, is unaware of it until the very end of the scene. She has an agenda, but it’s not social, legal, or (God help us all) political. It’s to help her flatmate and lover Rowenna, born a futanari, to reconcile with Walsingham, her father. Other than that, she’s a private person who was born male but “presents” as a woman. As she demands nothing from anyone, she is entitled to her privacy and to the tolerance of those around her.

     Imagine Holly using the women’s restroom at Costigan’s Pub. Imagine her going in, doing her business therein, washing her hands, perhaps powdering her nose, and emerging. Would anyone be moved to indignation? Why? Her public presentation is convincing. She hasn’t attacked anyone or exposed her lower body to anyone. Neither has anyone attacked her. So who would be incensed, and why?

     Now imagine that someone who knows, from other sources, that Holly was born Horace is present and raises a row over it. Who has committed the offense against the public peace, and why?

     As we mathematical types like to say, quod erat demonstrandum. No, don’t applaud; just buy my novels – and read them, and think. For the love of God and the future of the Republic, set your preconceptions and prejudices aside and think!

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     Blaire White, the transwoman featured (?) in the linked article from The Right Scoop, decided early on to go public about her decision. Her motives are her own; the consequences are not. One of those consequences is the sort of foofaurauw raised by Steve Deace and the writer(s) of the cited article. Yet had Blaire not chosen to go public, she would be as convincing as my fictional character Holly. She would pass as a woman born, and no one would have any cause to complain about her. So the reactions to her are entirely a consequence of not keeping her private decisions to herself. She’s intelligent, so she knows this.

     Deace and the Right Scoop editorialist commit a glaring sin against their own supposed conservatism by implying that Blaire cannot be a political conservative. What’s more conservative, politically, than an emphasis on the sanctity of personal privacy? Blaire has sacrificed her privacy for a reason, in my opinion, a good one: to demonstrate that there is such a thing as the socially tolerable transitioner. But she doesn’t demand that others accept her, or kowtow to her pronouncements.

     Transgenderism is a social and political problem only insofar as we allow it to become one. Unfortunately, the forces of chaos and division are using it as a stick to beat us with. That’s bad. It should be fought. But it should be fought on the correct grounds: the importance of personal privacy about intimate decisions to the preservation of vital social norms and public conduct. As there is no more intimate decision than whether to transition, or to what extent, I’m tempted to say that that “should” be “obvious.” Unfortunately once again, apparently it takes a Certified Galactic Intellect to make it obvious to a significant fraction of the “conservatives” among us.