My Recent Transgression

I was scolded the other day.

In a libertarian forum.

Shocked, I'm sure you are.

The form of the scolding is what entertained and blog-spired me, for it was a near-textbook example of the vacuity of so much present-day discourse.

My transgression (pun intended) was rebutting this meme:

with this comment:

and a link to my recent bit on the matter:

OP clapped back at me (and at someone else who didn’t buy into the OP’s meme) with this accusation:

I rejected the accusation, in form mirroring the OP's:

Then, the peanut gallery chimed in, bringing me great amusement.

Follow Peanut_01's line of "reasoning." First, an accusation of plagiarism was coupled with a "guilt-by-association" fallacy. Second, "bs talking points," "parroting," "every other anti trans person," "tired arguments," and "my own biases." A bushel of ad hominem attacks.

Notably absent was a rebuttal of any of those "talking points." Note, by the way, that calling them "talking points," with or without the "bs" modifier, is intended to diminish their potential validity by implying that they were cribbed rather than being original or personally crafted. As if repeating the Pythagorean Theorem undermines its validity simply because I didn't construct it myself. And, to drive the point home, there's the "genetic fallacy" of suggesting that, if Matt Walsh, who we are to presume is a horrible, anti-trans person simply from context, thinks X, X is not only wrong, it's bigoted.

I'm still waiting on Peanut_01's response to my last question.

In the meantime, I'll reiterate the salient point in my "Erasing Women" article. Until someone presents credible and substantive evidence that some course of chemical and/or surgical treatment can erase the physical advantages conferred by the XY chromosome, I will continue to argue against trans women in women's sports. I will defend trans-individuals' rights and argue for acceptance as I have for all individuals in this and every other society, but will continue to question the practice of transitioning minors (especially given the multiple accounts of forward pressure applied to kids). If someone chooses to call me transphobic because of this, I will choose to reject the accusation out of hand as baseless and as a deflection from having to debate the "talking points" I (and others) offered to question the trans-activists (the loud and sometimes divergent subset that have turned acceptance into coercion).

And, I won't be swayed in the least by:

John Cleese, to my great delight, recently rejected calls to censor the Loretta bit out of Monty Python's Life of Brian. As discussed here and elsewhere, the Pythons are now in dutch with the intelligentsia because they (presciently) mocked the notion that a man could choose to have babies by deciding he's a woman.

The amok-excess that has subsumed the trans acceptance movement is already working against acceptance, but rather than realize they've ventured into a bad place (and prompted some unfortunate blowback), the activists are choosing to double down, opting for, as the Left has become so fond of doing in recent years, overt coercion. Various institutions are implementing mandates punishing mis-gendering and dead-naming, and the government is using its power to force the admission of people with penises into women's spaces. This isn't how acceptance gets advanced, this is how trans persons are turned into political footballs, and caused undue harm.

How did we get here? How has such a fringe issue turned into one of the "litmus tests" of modern society? As usual, it's about power and the deep-rooted desire to crush "others." If this particular bit of social controversy can be leveraged to that end, it will be.