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“How can I help seeing what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four.”

“Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.”

He laid his head back against the pillow and sighed deeply. He was not any nearer to understanding O’Brien’s mind, but it had become more and more obvious that he was dealing, in some way or another, with the Party’s most characteristic mental disease—the belief that reality is not only describable in terms of matter-of-fact, but can be changed by the human will.

—George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

From the Sexual & Gender Minority Research Office of the National Institutes of Health (NIH): “Intentional refusal to use someone’s correct pronouns is equivalent to harassment and a violation of one’s civil rights.” Note the assumption conveyed by the adjective I have italicized. The relevance of this will become clear as the analysis unfolds.

The main point of the essay concerns the claim that misgendering is a civil rights violation. In fact, compelling a person to use preferred pronouns is a violation of civil and human rights. Punishment for characterizing pronouns as “preferred” or “chosen,” wrong adjectives, as this directive explains, is also a civil rights violation. As the reader will learn today, employees at NIH are being compelled to affirm with their utterances tenets of gender ideology.

The NIH cites as its authority Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which, among other things, expressly prohibits workplace discrimination on the basis of sex. In 2020, a majority of the United States Supreme Court ruled (three dissenting) that Title VII’s prohibition against sex discrimination includes discrimination based on an employee’s gender identity or sexual orientation.

The Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County is among its worst, standing alongside such notorious rulings as Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), Schenck v. United States (1919), and Buck v. Bell (1927).

While sexual orientation is reasonably part of what we mean by the term sex, a matter of objective reality (what gametes are produced), gender identity apart from a person’s sex is a subjective matter. It is a feeling. Today, a person may identify as a gender opposite their sex and gain access to sex-based resources intended or reserved for the other sex, compelling men and women to regard men as women and all that entails.

Leveraging the opportunity created by this decision to press gender ideology into the state bureaucracy, the NIH guidance would have its employees believe that “misgendering” a person (rendered in quotes here because by calling either sex the gender of the other it is literally the opposite of misgendering) is a civil rights violation when in fact the rule is the violation of civil rights at its most fundamental level.

To clarify, this has nothing to do with content of speech. It doesn’t matter whether a person believes that a man can be a woman. One is free to believe that if he wishes. This has everything to do with fundamental rights to speech and conscience and whether the government can make a person speak as if a man can be a woman. The same right that allows a man to present himself as a woman (as long as this is not for the purposes of committing fraud), makes it wrong to compel others to regard him as such.

Ask yourself whether it would be appropriate for the government to tell a man he cannot believe he is a woman. Again, a man can believe anything he wishes. Men believe men have souls. Men are convinced men did not land on the moon. (Wouldn’t it be something if that were true?)

It is terribly worrisome that the administrators and bureaucrats at a public institution in a constitutional republic with a bill of rights that explicitly identifies freedom of speech and conscience as paramount among those rights either don’t understand the principle at hand or mean to disregard the principle altogether (as we will see, it is both).

Compelling an employee to use “correct” pronouns, i.e., those pronouns preferred by another person, by discipling (and this includes mandatory DEI training), punishing, or terminating an employee for refusing to do so is a violation of civil and human rights for what ought to be obvious reasons. But since it too often is not, I will provide the reasons.

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution (also known as Article One of the United States Bill of Rights) states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

These rights have been applied to all persons under the authority of the United States government through a process known as incorporation involving the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, which states that no state may deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.

Initially, the Bill of Rights did not apply to state governments. However, over time, through a series of Supreme Court decisions, many of the provisions in the Bill of Rights have been made applicable to the states. This means that states must also uphold and protect the same fundamental rights and protections guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, such as freedom of speech and religion.

In the mid-20th century, the Court applied the First Amendment’s protection of religion to state and local governments. In the landmark case Everson v. Board of Education (1947), the Court held that the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from establishing an official religion, applied to state and local governments through the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court reasoned that the First Amendment’s protections of religious freedom were “fundamental” to the American way of life and therefore applied to all levels of government.

Since Everson, the Court has continued to interpret the First Amendment’s protections of assembly, free speech, petition, press, and religion to apply to state and local governments through the doctrine of incorporation. The principle is that these fundamental rights are “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty” and are therefore protected from infringement at all and by all levels of government.

(And while the First Amendment to the United States Constitution does not specifically mention freedom of conscience, it was assumed in its formulation and agreed upon during debate that freedom of conscience is a vital aspect of the broader protections for freedom of expression, religion, and thought enshrined in the amendment. Think of your right to privacy: not mentioned in the Bill of Rights, but necessarily assumed for the Fourth Amendment to work.)

This is a powerful package of rights. The framers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were committed to limiting the power of the government and protecting the individual rights of citizens from the government and tyranny of the majority. The First Amendment was seen as a key safeguard against government overreach and the suppression of dissenting and offensive opinions.

It is as clear as anything could be that compelling a person to regard a man as a woman is government overreach and the suppression of dissenting and offensive views. It is just as clear that the mob can’t compel such a thing, as well.

The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights protects speech and thought as fundamental rights, too. Article 19 of the declaration states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

Freedom to express one’s beliefs, ideas, and opinions means doing so without fear of censorship or retaliation. The right to free speech and thought is a cornerstone of democratic societies and is essential for the advancement of knowledge and understanding, exchange of ideas and information, and the promotion of individual liberty.

Moreover, the preceding right in this document protects freedom of conscience as a fundamental human right. Article 18 of the declaration states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”

Article 18 emphasizes, among other things, the right to express the tenets of one’s conscience without fear of discrimination or persecution. The right to freedom of conscience is essential for the promotion of diversity, individual liberty, and tolerance.

If a woman expresses her view that a man is not a woman and, furthermore, insists that she will not regard a man as such in the utterances she makes in describing the world and in advocacy, as a matter of free thought or conscience, disciplining, punishing, or terminating her employment would constitute a violation of her civil and human rights.

Yet the administrators and bureaucrats at the NIH will tell you that it is the other way around. The institution’s policy upends civil and human rights.

The administrators and bureaucrats at NIH are telling the public that the failure to discipline, punish, reprimand, or terminate the employment of the person refusing to comply with demands violative of her civil and human rights violates the rights of a man who seeks to compel her to regard him as a woman, a right that exists nowhere in the fundamental law I have been citing nor, if supposed by abstract argument surrounding them, cannot stand over the right to speech and conscience.

A woman’s right to describe reality cannot be justifiably trumped by the power to force her to lie. Such power has no authority in law and is therefore illegitimate.

* * *

Compelled speech, which is precisely what a rule forcing an individual to use another person’s preferred pronouns when he does not wish to constitutes, is a violation of the right to free speech and freedom of conscience because it forces the individual to express views or beliefs that are not his own, or that he find objectionable or offensive. It forces him to act in bad faith.

The right to free speech includes not only the freedom to express one’s own ideas and opinions, but also the freedom not to speak or express views with which that person does not agree. The right to freedom of conscience includes the right to hold and practice one’s own beliefs without interference or coercion.

Of course the right to be free to express ones views is at the same time the right to be free from expressing the views of others.

When individuals are compelled to speak or express views that are not their own, this not only violates their freedom of speech and conscience, but it also has a chilling effect on dissent. Compelled speech creates an environment in which individuals are afraid to speak out or express their own views for fear of reprisals or punishment, forcing them into bad faith, making them to lie about the world.

That this situation carries harmful effects diversity of thought, exchange of ideas, and individual liberty—all essential components of a free and democratic society—is so obvious that having to remind people of it tells us that we are far down the road to tyranny. The NIH hopes people don’t consider their rights.

A free man has no more of an obligation to affirm the gender identity of another person as he has to affirm the existence of the angels and devils that populate the religious worldview of a colleague. It violates his freedom to think and speaks according to his beliefs and values to force him to think and speak according to someone else’s beliefs and values. It corrupts the integrity of his person to compel him to think and speak according to somebody else’s “truth.” It dehumanizes him.

* * *

Changing how people think in ways that would not naturally occur to them and for the sake of others at the expense of themselves is tricky business. Check this out:

“Encouraging the disclosure and use of gender pronouns can create inclusive and welcoming work environments for SGM employees and their allies,” the NIH document states.

“One of the simplest ways to promote the appropriate and correct use of pronouns is by being open about your own in everyday communications (introductions, PPT slides, etc). Disclosing personal pronouns at the start of a conversation or adding them to one’s email signature block may make others more comfortable to disclose their own and prevent misgendering in the workplace.”

Here we see the demands of compelled speech as part of a systematic effort as changing the culture of belief for the sake of a particular doctrine, i.e., gender ideology. Thus the policy assumes as given that which demands debate.

One might object to my argument by noting that the document reassures employees that “pronoun disclosure remains an individual choice and not a mandate.” But this is not because it would be wrong to make employees do so. “An employee may not be ready to ‘come out’ and disclose their gender identity to their colleagues, and a mandate would create unnecessary pressure and stress.” Did you think the directive was centering you and your concerns?

Furthermore, the document continues, soaked in the jargon of woke progressivism, “mandating all employees to use pronouns may come off as performative allyship, especially if employees are uncertain or unable to articulate why correct pronoun usage is important.”

“Performative allyship” is a term used to describe when someone outwardly expresses support for a marginalized group, but their actions or actual beliefs do not align with their words. This occurs when someone performs allyship for the sake of appearing to be an ally, rather than truly committing to doing the work of being an ally and advocating for change. It occurs when someone engages in acts of charity or tokenism without addressing the systemic and institutional forces and practices that perpetuate discrimination and inequities.

Performative allyship is harmful, we’re told, because it gives the impression of support without actually doing anything to create real change. It also centers the ally’s feelings and need for validation, rather than the needs and experiences of the marginalized group they claim to be supporting. True allyship involves an ongoing commitment to learning, listening, and actively working to dismantle systems of oppression, rather than simply performing support for appearances.

Given widespread prejudice against trans people, the unwashed are regarded suspiciously by the clergy. When individuals are forced to identify their gender for the sake of appearing to be committed to an ideology, it may be the case that they are really doing so out of fear or are acting opportunistically rather than actually believing in the doctrine.

In other words: Don’t fake it. Believe it. The powers-that-be want more than bad faith; they want obsession with privilege checking.

There appears here a concern with what Orwell calls “doublethink,” suggested by the passage from Nineteen Eighty-Four quotes above.

Orwell tells us about a conversation between Winston and O’Brien where Winston’s “mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word ‘doublethink’ involved the use of doublethink.”

Like the Inner Party, those who wish to change our minds really do not want exercises in bad faith. They want changed minds. They want true believers.

* * *

I noted earlier that employees are warned about using “preferred” or “chosen” to characterize pronouns. “Using either word suggests that gender identity is a preference or a choice, when it is neither.” According to who?

We find once more a government agency assuming as true a claim that has not been proven. On what empirical grounds is it true that pronouns are not in the case of a trans gender person preferred or chosen? What is the evidence that a person is born with a gender that does not align with his sex? What is a gender if it is not the species-specific name of a sex genotype?

Are employees being told that there are no cases in which a man identifies as a woman as a matter of choice, for example, for opportunistic reasons? I find it incredible that there are no cases in which a man lies about who he is to get something he wants. I’m a criminologist. My profession demands that I grasp this. Criminology is the scientific study of, among other things, men who lie about who they are to get things they want.

But don’t worry about that. Worry about this non-exhaustive list of “correct pronouns”:

Disclaimer: In this blog, I illustrate the argument with some hypotheticals. This is not the first time I have done this. To make these hypotheticals obvious, the interactions with my dean are fictional. Why I need this disclaimer is because the fictional interactions illustrate a truth in today’s society and so they feel very real.

Assume I am a Christian (I am not, but go with me on this for the sake of argument). As an article of faith, I believe Jesus is the son of God. One day I say so around others in the faculty lounge and a Muslim at the table tells me that this is a false doctrine. In Islam, he explains, Jesus is recognized as a prophet and messenger of God, but he is not the son of God. He cannot be, the Muslim tells me. God is one, indivisible, and does not have any associates in his divinity.

Is it appropriate for me to demand that the Muslim affirm my belief in Jesus as the son of God or, at the very least, to not deny it? I find his denial of a core tenet of my faith offensive. My religion means everything to me. My core identity is Christian. It is who I am. The Muslim should be sensitive to that and at least not deny Christian doctrine in my presence. So I ask my dean to admonish the man for offending me. What do you think the dean will do? Did you say “nothing”? You are correct.

Suppose I am a college professor who teaches sociology of religion (I am this, so you don’t have to suspend your disbelief on this point for this illustration, or the two after it). For lecture today I will be introducing the unit on Islam, and the opening slide is a painting originating in Tabriz from the year 1307 of the Muslim prophet Muhammad solving a dispute over who should rebuild the Kaaba and dedicate the sacred black stone (which they do cleverly and collaboratively by use of a cloth). I will also share another painting from this place and time: Muhammad receiving his first revelation from the angel Gabriel.

A Muslim student in the class complains that my showing pictures of Muhammad in class violates her religion’s prohibition against depicting Allah or the prophets in art, statues, or other representational media. This prohibition is called aniconism. It is the belief or practice found in many religions prohibiting the manufacture or use of icons, idols, or images of religious entities. I am unsympathetic to her complaint. The student complains to administrators and I am summoned to the dean’s office who tells me that my training should have taught me to be sensitive to such matters and threatens me with formal disciplinary action if I do not apologize to the class and promise never to do this again. (See The Continuing Problem of Compelled Expression.) What should I do?

Suppose I am teaching a class on ethnic and race relations and, in the context of a lecture about the history of anti-black bigotry, I use the word “nigger.” Black students in the class tell me that, as a white man, I am not allowed use that word. I try to explain the difference between using the word in a derogatory manner and using it to accurately convey the language used in historical situations, but they’re having none of it. They want an apology. I don’t apologize and they report me to the dean. The dean is even more forceful with me this time. He is close to moving the matter to a disciplinary level and placing a reprimand in my personnel file. He suggests sensitivity training. Maybe I need tutoring in how to create an inclusive classroom. How shall I respond?

Now suppose I am lecturing on gender and sex. At some point during the semester, a student asks the question, “What is a woman?” I respond with a objective non-tautological definition: “A woman is an adult human female.” “So a trans woman is not a woman?” “No, a trans woman is a male who identifies as a woman.” Another students angrily asserts, “Trans women are women!” A lot of cross talk and dramatic body language ensues and, unable to regain command of the room, I dismiss the class. A group of students follow me to my office, taunting me with accusations of “transphobia.” Within a few minutes I receive a call from the dean. The students told on me. This time, he is formally reprimanding me and enrolling me in a DEI training course. Should I speak with the union? A free speech organization? A lawyer?

Except for refusing the admonish the Muslim for denying an article of my faith, all the actions the dean has taken are inappropriate. Just contacting me with concerns about showing a depiction of Muhammad, uttering the word “nigger,” or observing the objective fact that men can’t be women is a violation of my free speech right and academic freedom.

The dean’s actions reinforce the chilling effect of patterns of suppression. I was already hesitant to show pictures of Muhammad or say “nigger” in class. And I was dreading the question “What is a woman?” I had often thought about how I would answer that question—and what I would do when students reacted to my answer, since I had decided my response would have to be straightforward.

I have discussed the free speech right on Freedom and Reason before, and I have a post coming soon delving more deeply into the matter. But some readers might be unfamiliar with the principle of academic freedom, which is something of an added layer of protection for scholars and teachers. Academic freedom refers to the idea that educators and researchers enjoy the freedom to engage in intellectual inquiry and communicating their findings and the findings of others without fear of censorship, interference, or retribution from those who pull the levers of power.

Academic freedom is essential for the advancement of critical thinking, the production of knowledge, and the pursuit of truth. By respecting scholar’s freedom to research and teach controversial or unpopular ideas, challenge existing assumptions and paradigms, and express their views and opinions freely, without fear of persecution or retribution, to choose their research topics, use their preferred methods and approaches, and select their teaching materials and pedagogical styles without undue interference or pressure, society benefits the diversity of ideas necessary for innovation and progress—while respecting the humanity of the individual, from whom cognitive liberty and free of conscience are the most essential rights of being.

Some will counter that academic freedom does not mean unlimited freedom, noting that scholars and educators are subject to academic standards, institutional policies, and professional ethics. They also have a responsibility to promote intellectual diversity, tolerance for others’ views and standpoints, and maintain a safe and inclusive learning environment. Indeed! But if standard and policies are written in such a way as to infringe on academic freedom, the standards and policies are contrary to the purpose of a free and open system of inquiry and communication and are therefore illegitimate.

Moreover, the right to free speech, a constitutional right, one recognized in international law, cannot be abridged by standards and policies of any sort in the public sphere except time and place restrictions and real threats. Promoting intellectual diversity is part of academic freedom; tolerating other viewpoints is part of the free speech standard generally. These comprise the foundational right with which the students are interfering in demanding the dean address my speech acts in any thing other than a supportive way. Maintaining a “safe and inclusive learning environment” is code for suppression of free speech and academic freedom. The rules of equity and inclusivity constrain free speech and academic freedom. They are therefore illiberal and contrary to the core mission of the university.

Again, why should the dean even call me to his office to explain myself in the first place? Can’t he explain free speech and academic freedom to the complainants? He is still an educator. I remind him every time we speak that the United States is a country with a formal bill of rights and that the first article of this bill protects freedom of speech and conscience from restriction by authorities in public institutions and spaces. I quote to him not only the First Amendment, but the 18th and 19th articles of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I remind him about the doctrine of academic freedom, found in the AAUP’s 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure and his obligation as an administrator to protect both the fundamental law and the institutional practice.

He tells me that the issue here is that there are asymmetries of power in the United States that mean that minorities cannot be treated the same way as the majority. The demands of social justice make special demands of me as a Christian white cisgendered man. The Muslim, black, and trans communities lack power. They are vulnerable populations. The intersection of my identities make me the most privileged person in history and justice requires that take that privilege into account in designing course structure and content and shaping my pedagogical style. While a Muslim can deny Jesus is the son of God, blacks can refer to whites as “crackers” and to each other as “niggers,” and trans gender individuals can assert that men are women, exceptions they should be allow because of their marginal status in a Christian, white, and cisgendered world and the long history of oppression they have experienced, a man of that world, who has not experienced oppression, cannot speak in this way because of the unearned power he inherited and possesses. The dean, who also exists at the intersection of my identities, is the paradigm of how such a man is supposed to act.

This is woke progressivism and it’s a quasi-religious ordering of institutions that violates the core principles of a free and open system, as well as the ethical demand to regard individuals as sovereign and autonomous. It is at best one theory about the world. (See Free Speech Friday: The False Doctrine of “Weapons of the Weak.”)

One obvious problem with the dean’s argument is that the free speech right, both in United States and international law, is a human right that obtains at the individual level. We don’t have differential access to free speech on the grounds of group membership and an abstract theory about asymmetrical power relations. Voting is the obvious analog. My vote counts the same as everybody else’s. Black Americans don’t get two votes to my one. Likewise, white Christian men are no less entitled to exercise their free speech right than members of any other group.

But there’s another problem, and it lies in predicting outcomes based on asymmetrical power relations. If Muslims have little or no power, then why did I worry about showing depictions of Muhammad in my sociology of religion class? Why, if blacks have so little power, are most white people reduced to talking like children, using “N-word” instead of the word itself? Why am I expected in order to avoid admonishment and possibility disciplinary action to affirm gender ideology by agreeing with the slogan “Trans women are women?”

Maybe I hesitated showing depictions of Muhammad because of the tyranny of Islamic terrorism. In the fall of 2020, Chechen refugee Abdullakh Anzorov, who had been living in France for years, beheaded Samuel Paty as he was leaving the Paris middle school where he taught history and geography. Anzorov said the attack was revenge for Paty showing his class the Mohammed cartoons associated with the 2015 massacre of French cartoonists in Paris. It was a lesson on free speech. Maybe I should be happy that all I received was my dean expressing concern over my classroom behavior. (See Threat Minimization and Ecumenical Demobilization.)

I was likewise concerned about the question about defining what a woman is because of the rampant terrorism of trans activists from New Zealand to California. I saw the scenes at San Francisco State. I saw the deranged activist screaming at Gaines as she escaped the mob down a hallway to a safe room, protected by security and university staff. “Yeah you fucking transphobic bitch—I fucking see you!” “Bye bitch! Fuck you,” the activists shouted. Holding “Trans Lives Matter” signs, zombie chanting “Trans rights are human rights” and “Trans women are women.” The mob held Gaines hostage for several hours. The San Francisco Police Department had to be called in to resolve the situation. They made no arrests.

How did vulnerable minorities obtain the power to terrorize, intimidate, and punishment me for using words they don’t like if they are vulnerable minorities? How are the police on their side. Incident after incident, from Antifa to Black Lives Matter, we see who the authorities stand with. How does a trans identifying woman enter a Christian school and massacre children but the state blame the victims? Who is in control of the asymmetrical power relations posted by the theory of intersectionality when the supposed oppressor is the one who feels the weight of boot on the back of his neck?

I cringe at using the word “nigger” because I am the oppressor? Is that how it has worked down through the ages: the oppressor is the one who cannot speak his mind while the oppressed are able to say whatever they will? The oppressor in a cisgender ordered world cannot say a woman is an adult human female, but the oppressed in that same world can insist that trans women are women? A Christian must endure the insult that Jesus is not the son of God, but showing depictions of Muhammad in a classroom is insensitive? How did the oppressed wrest institutional power from the oppressor? How did the oppressor end up less powerful than those he is accused of oppressing?

Yet another problem with the dean’s paradigm is the act of infantilizing supposedly vulnerable minorities by treating them as if they are so fragile that they cannot endure seeing depictions of Muhammad, hearing a derogatory slur they themselves constantly use, or being reminded that men cannot as a matter of objective reality be women. We have seen that the power of these groups the dean feels such paternalism towards is such that they represents the church over against Galileo Galilei and Giordano Bruno. The church did not suppress the ideas of these astronomers because the clergy were infantile. They suppressed their ideas (and put Galileo under house arrest while burning Bruno at the stake) because they did not want to see the reproduction of mutual knowledge that would bring into question church doctrine. The dean is a bureaucrat for the clergy. Trans activists don’t harass people for failing to affirm the slogan “Trans women are women” because they are infantile. They do this because they need others to affirm the slogan because the delusion the slogan is attempting to support is obviously false.

We see the same infantilization at work in the oft-repeated warning that failing to affirm trans gender identities will cause people to commit suicide. Just yesterday we learned that Zooey Zephyr of the Montana legislature, censured for telling colleagues he hoped the next time “you bow your heads in prayer, you see blood on your hands,” was upset because the censure statement used he/him pronouns in describing him, a transgression the trans community characterizes as “misgendering.” Zephyr is, after all, a man, and the legislators are under no obligation to affirm his delusions. (Nor am I.)

In a tweet sharing a letter in which a trans person threatens suicide because the legislature passed legislation stopping doctors from performing life-altering experiments on children, Zephyr wrote: “When I said there is blood on their hands, I meant it,” adding, “All legislators (& the Gov) received a letter from an ER doctor who dealt w/ a suicide attempt from a trans teen who cited OUR LEGISLATURE as a factor in their suicidality. ‘My state doesn’t want me,’ is what they said.”

Here is Zephyr’s original tweet, along with Zephyr’s follow up tweet with the blackmail letter:

When I said there is blood on their hands, I meant it.

All legislators (& the Gov) received a letter from an ER doctor who dealt w/ a suicide attempt from a trans teen who cited OUR LEGISLATURE as a factor in their suicidality.

"My state doesn't want me," is what they said. pic.twitter.com/DZBslPjJTP

— Rep. Zooey Zephyr (@ZoAndBehold) April 18, 2023

While a child threatening suicide if he doesn’t get his way is not uncommon in human history, in the case of the trans blackmail play, this is a concerted effort to prey on the conscience of the public. The tactic is to stop thought about medical experimentation on children and shift attention to the problem that trans identifying youth, like many other mentally disordered persons, are at elevated risk for suicide. To suggest that disagreeing with a person’s argument or refusing to affirm their delusions means bearing some responsibility for that person’s self-harm or harm was also heard following the Charlie Hebdo massacre and other acts of terrorism justified by the actions of the terrorized. Indeed, the similarity between trans activism and Islamic terrorism should have been obvious from the beginning. Just as the common resort to words with the suffix “phobia” give away the propaganda game.

* * *

The world we are being asked to disbelieve is the one in which offending a trans persons is grounds for discipline, but a trans person can harass, intimidate, even perpetrate violence against the cisgender person and this is rendered as social justice. But this is the world we live in. On the one side, there are those who voice and wear the slogan “Trans women are women.” On the other, there are those who voice and wear the slogan “Women: adult human female.” To each side, these are true statements. Each have their arguments for why this is so. But the former are fighting for human rights (another slogan: “Trans rights are human rights”), while the latter is decried as “bigotry.”

Imagine if those of the latter group—the collection of feminists, lesbians, liberals, and conservatives who believe in free speech and scientific reality—physically assaulted those of the former. They bully the person with the T-shirt bearing the slogan. They wade into an assembly of trans activists and assault the participants. They demand laws punishing those professing gender ideology and queer theory. They demand mandatory training so that everybody can made aware that women are adult human females.

Of course, you will have to imagine this because it doesn’t happen. Liberals and all the rest are prepared to allow those who wish to believe the tenets of gender ideology to have those beliefs and even to express themselves however they wish. Why should they care that a person believes a man can be a woman if that belief does not affect their lives? To be sure, sometimes, though not enough, when it does affect their lives, they speak up, but there is no violence. There are no calls for laws to silence them. There are no calls for mandatory training sessions.

This is not of course true for the advocates of gender ideology. We have a treasure trove of videos feminists, lesbians, liberals, and conservatives being assaulted by trans activists. That it is those opposing Islamization, limits on expression, and affirming delusions who are portrayed as the threat. The threats to religious liberty, free speech and conscience, these are portrayed as good and righteous. This tells you where the power is. Everything we feared about the postmodernist contamination of language has arrived. Why? Control. How are they able to do this? They have captured all the major institutions. It’s the endgame for the republic. Welcome to existential crisis.

I have been digging into the data and will blog about this soon, but the moral panic over guns right now is so hysterical that I have to write a blog about it now. When we look at the ten worst states for gun homicide, at least eight of them are southern states (Missouri is a regional edge case). We find that most of those states have easy availability of guns and that the strongest defenders of less restrictive gun laws are conservative white men. That’s what the media wants you to know and then stop thinking.

But if you actually look at the data, you will find that the driver of gun homicide is not rural conservative white boys and men. It’s not the people progressives and the media want you to fear. It’s not MAGA. It’s urban black boys and men. Black males are drastically overrepresented in gun homicide statistics—on both the perpetrator and victim sides. They are moreover more likely to possess illegal firearms, because they intend to use them in crime commission.

In Missouri, for example, blacks are nearly twice as likely to commit murder and nearly two and a half times more likely to be murdered compared to whites. Blacks, mostly young males, comprise 69 percent of murder victims in that state. Moreover, sixty-five percent of robberies are committed by blacks. All violent crime accounted for, half are committed by blacks, while fifty-five percent of victims of violent crimes are white. And Missouri is not the only state with this profile. (See How Progressive Criminal Justice Policy Puts Black Lives at Risk.)

The mainstream rhetoric on guns forms a false narrative. Like they do with most everything else, progressive elites are lying to you—and many of them don’t know they are lying. They’re focused on rifles because these are the weapons most effective in resisting tyranny. That’s why progressives call those rifles “weapons of war.” The corporate elite are paranoid: they think the far right is an imminent threat to “democracy.” But, really, they’re coming after all guns. If they could repeal the Second Amendment, they would. But they can’t, so they chip away at the right—and lie about what lies at the root of gun violence in America and who represents the actual threat to public safety to advance the agenda.

They want red flag laws and background checks for mental illness to identify those the state regards as a threat to political power. It’s a lot like the prior restrain concept in free speech law. Prior restraint is the practice of stopping the exercise of a right before it is executed. And why shouldn’t we? Words put murderous thoughts in people’s heads. Unrestricted access to words has laid before us a blood-soaked road. Let’s do background checks and pass red flag laws to make it less likely that those who wish to hear and read words won’t do something awful with them. You get the idea.

Abridgment of speech and all the rest of it fits nicely alongside abridgment of the right that follows it in the United States Bill of Rights. Soon political opinions that threaten the corporate state will be treated as red flags. They have already moved the administrative state to surveil and harass American citizens based on their expressions and politics. These may be portrayed as signs of mental illness. They will then use these laws and policies to prevent ownership of guns based on political and social profiles. Confiscation will occur largely beyond mass consciousness; dispossession is carried out on a case-by-case basis, beyond mutual knowledge. Independent journalists who make this known will be dismissed by the general population as crackpot through the propaganda work of prebunking.

The right to self-defense is a fundamental civil and human right going back centuries. The government has no business telling citizens they cannot effect that right with semi-automatic rifles. The Second Amendment is in the same package of rights as the other fundamental rights American citizens enjoy—freedom of speech, assembly, and association; religious liberty; privacy and protection from arbitrary state intrusion; the right to remain silent; protection from cruel and unusual punishment. We will only keep our rights as long as we aggressively assert them.

There is one party that stands out as the greatest threat to that package of fundamental rights. It isn’t the Republican Party. Choose accordingly.

Anarchists have appropriated the Three Arrows of the Iron Front. The Iron Front was a German paramilitary organization in the Weimar Republic made up of liberals, social democrats, and trade unionists. It stood for liberal democracy against totalitarian ideologies on the far-right and the far-left—which included anarchists. It is now being used to represent the desire of the most authoritarian and illiberal movement on the face of the planet.

Today’s anarchism, manifest at the street level by Antifa, represent a totalitarian ideology rooted in the far-left. One sees the Iron Front symbol not only alongside the anarchist symbol, but also accompanied by the communist hammer and sickle. This is typical of woke progressivism. When it is not erasing the accomplishments of those who solved problems through democratic action, progressives are commandeering the rhetoric and symbology of the defenders of democracy and liberty.

The great irony here is that Antifa back in the day opposed the Iron Front. And they still do in spirit. They regard the Iron Front as not only bourgeois, but also fascist. Of course, Antifa regards everything as fascist except itself—despite representing today the single greatest instantiation of street-level fascism in the world. The Iron Front understood the fascistic tendencies intrinsic to anarchism. The three arrows logo represented opposition to Antifa’s affiliated party, the KPD.

Why is anarchism intrinsically fascistic? Because it is at its core an antidemocratic and illiberal ideology that serves the interests of the corporate state. Anarchists, drawn from the alienated youth of the middle class, the lumpenproletariat, and disordered personalities everywhere, are always up for reactionary intrigue. They are therefore useful for the revolution-from-above that marks the New Fascist assault on democratic-republicanism and the enlightenment.

If the Iron Front were being properly represented today, those bearing this symbol would thwart Antifa action wherever it cropped up. They would never leave such matters to the Proud Boys. Where were those of the true spirit of the Iron Front when Riley Gaines was being assaulted and held hostage for more than three hours? Where were they when the mob attacked Kellie Jay Keen and other women as the “Let Women Speak” rally in Auckland, New Zealand? Where are the defenders of republicanism and liberal democracy?

Update (Thursday, April 20, 2023): You’ve probably heard about Klint Ludwig throwing his grandpa Andrew Lester under the bus. Thought you might want to put your eyes on Klint and see whether you’re surprised. Ludwig, a Democratic Party shill, seized the opportunity to feed CNN propaganda points, with race-baiting anchor Don Lemon stuffing his face with the robust meal of progressive talking point. Other of Lester’s relatives dispute the claims Ludwig makes. Lester was not a racist. He was a scared old man.

Meanwhile, police are on the hunt for Robert Louis Singletary. Singletary fired on a family living in his neighborhood in Gaston County, Norther Carolina. Six-year-old Kinsley White was hit by shrapnel after retrieving her basketball from a location near Singletary’s residence. Singletary also wounded White’s mother and father. Shielding his wife and child from the shooter, the father, William, took the brunt of the attack. He remains in the hospital in critical condition.

Although the story is being covered by major media, this almost certainly the result of the barrage of criticism concerning the double standard by the media when it comes to the reality of racial violence in America, the reporting does not discuss the possibility that the interracial character of the crime suggests a “racial component.” The failure to suggest this stands in stark contrast the reflex to imply racism whenever the interracial angle is in reverse.

* * *

Yesterday, in Kansas City, Missouri, an 84-year-old white man named Andrew Lester was charged with first-degree assault and armed criminal action for allegedly shooting a 16-year-old black kid named Ralph Yarl. Yarl had misunderstood the directions he was given and wound up at the wrong address. Yarl was struck twice. He is now at home recovering. I hope he makes a full recovery.

The media is reporting that Clay County Prosecutor’s Office said the crime had a “racial component.” While there is no mention of this in the charging document, the case does indeed have a racial component. Young black men like Yarl are daily put in harm’s way by crime control policies developed and implemented by urban elites.

The progressive approach to public safety puts black people at risk in a myriad of ways. That most murder victims in America are black males—dying at the hands of other black males—is only the outstanding fact (albeit a fact largely ignored by the corporate state media). The case of Yarl indicates another risk: the racialization of threat perception shaped by high rates of criminal violence.

Routinely in the top ten deadliest cities in America, Kansas City is among the worst in the country for criminal violence. The state as a whole is only second to Mississippi when it comes to the rate of gun homicides. Missouri’s other large city, St. Louis, has the second highest homicide rate in the country after New Orleans. In some some years, St. Louis surpasses New Orleans in gun homicides.

Gun violence by blacks drives the murder rate in Missouri. At 11.8 percent, the black population in Missouri is less than the national average (13.6 percent); yet, compared to whites, blacks are nearly twice as likely to commit murder and nearly two and a half times more likely to be murdered. Blacks commit 60 percent of murders in Missouri. They are 69 percent of murder victims. The vast majority of perpetrators and victims of gun homicide are males. Males are half the population in the United States. That means that less than six percent of the population in Missouri commit most of the murders in that state.

Blacks are overrepresented in other violent crimes, as well. Sixty-five percent of robberies are committed by blacks. However, fifty-four percent of robbery victims are white. All violent crime accounted for, half are committed by blacks, while fifty-five percent of victims of violent crimes are white.

One of the consequences of not controlling crime is that public fear of crime grows. We are told that it is biased media coverage that raises the fear level. To be sure, the media distorts perception. But in the case of law and order issues, the bias runs in the opposite direction progressives claim. The role blacks play in serious crime is downplayed by the media. Rather it is the clear overrepresentation of certain groups in homicide and other violent crimes that changes mass perception. The fear is therefore not entirely irrational. Under these conditions, what used to be a mistaken address becomes a potential home invasion, a risk statistically more likely amid the failure to control crime.

There is no shortage of videos on the Internet of trusting people being victimized in their own homes by intruders who were not regarded with the degree of caution one exercises to be safe in a dangerous city. The Internet allows people to get around the corporate state filter. Seeing this, the citizen gets a gun to protect himself from very real threats. He is determined to not to be another victim; if the police aren’t going to protect him, then he will protect himself. By heightening the threat of interpersonal crime, bad public policy makes it more likely a citizen will use that gun in an ambiguous situation. People become less cautious in their actions when they are under siege. Is that a lion in the bush? Or just the wind? It’s how we are hardwired.

According to sources, Lester told police that he had just gone to bed when the doorbell rang. He picked up his handgun and opened the interior door of his house. There he found a black male pulling on the exterior door. He thought the male was trying to break into the house. He told police that he was “scared to death” at the size of the male. He feared that at his advanced age he would be unable to defend himself against an intruder, so he twice discharged his weapon.

Crime is rampant in Kansas City, as it is throughout urban America, and it’s growing worse. As you can see from the above graph, the murder rate in Missouri is higher now that it has been at any time since before 1985—even higher than the previous peak year, in 1993, when the nation as a whole was experiencing historically high violent crime rates. Moreover, the murder rate for Missouri has in most years exceeded the national rate of homicide. The increase in homicide since the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement and the shift in criminal justice policy towards ever greater leniency is especially startling. Homicide in Missouri is now nearly twice the rate of the national average.

The racialization of threat perception is an awful tax laid upon innocent blacks by the failure of governments to control urban crime. This failure rests at the feet of progressive urban policy, which the work of the Democratic Party. It is no accident that, of the thirty most violent cities in America, twenty-seven of them are run by progressives. Is it therefore surprising that the mayor of Kansas City, Quinton Lucas, is a Democrat? Would it surprise you if I told you that the mayor of St. Louis, Tishaura Jones, is a Democrat? It’s predictable.

Doug and I are praying for Ralph Yarl and his family as he fights for his life.

Let's be clear: No child should ever live in fear of being shot for ringing the wrong doorbell.

Every child deserves to be safe. That’s the America we are fighting for.

— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) April 17, 2023

“Let’s be clear: No child should ever live in fear of being shot for ringing the wrong doorbell,” Vice President Kamala Harris tweeted. “Every child deserves to be safe.” Indeed. But they won’t be as long as Harris’ party runs our nation’s cites.

Did you know that in the late 1990s, Dr. Robert Smith, a surgeon at Falkirk and District Royal Infirmary in Scotland, performed leg amputations on two perfectly healthy men? Horrifying, no? Unthinkable, right? It happened.

Both men suffered from a form of body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) known as apotemnophilia. This condition causes patients to believe that they will only be normal if they have a limb removed. In each case, the men had their leg amputated above the knee.

Smith performed the surgeries after the men had been turned away by other doctors. Before the surgeries, both patients underwent counseling by psychiatrists and a psychologist, and they were assessed by medical professionals. The procedures were discussed with Smith’s defense body and the ethics committee of the General Medical Council. The hospital charged £3,000 ($4,800) per leg amputation.

The chairman and board members of Forth Valley Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, which manages the hospital, were unaware of the surgeries at the time. They only became aware of them in the summer of 1999, when Mr Smith informed the trust’s new chief executive, Jim Currie, that he was evaluating a third patient, an American. The trust announced a ban on further amputations after a report from its ethics subcommittee.

Smith said that there were two groups of patients who wished to have limbs amputated. The larger group found the idea sexually arousing, while both of his patients were part of a small subgroup that sought amputation because they felt incomplete with four limbs but would feel complete with three. (It was later revealed that one of the two men did in fact have a fetish for amputees.)

According to Smith, people with this condition frequently harm themselves, such as shooting their leg off or lying on train tracks. One of the men was close to suicide, according to Smith. This necessitated affirming the identities as amputees. He stated that the patients’ lives had been greatly improved by the surgeries, and they were pleased with their new state. They received artificial limbs, but did not always wear them. Lucky for them they have no regrets, since their transition to the status of amputee is irreversible.

Smith told a press conference at the hospital, “At the end of the day, I have no doubt that what I was doing was the correct thing for those patients.” The trust’s chairman, Ian Mullen, stated at the time that such surgeries were not excluded in the future, but a strict protocol would have to be followed. Since then, the practice has been banned.

However, the problem of apotemnophilia hasn’t gone away. In 2017, Mirror covered the story of Nick, from Edinburgh. Nick says “I want it to be amputated. I perceive that to be my end goal. It is really the only way that I can see a future where I am happy and comfortable with myself.”

Mirror journalists explain that “Nick suffers from a rare, debilitating condition known as body integrity identity disorder, which stops sufferers from recognizing body parts as their own.”

Body integrity identity disorder (BIID), which includes apotemnophilia, is related to BDD, a condition where people have a distorted view of their physical appearance, leading them to obsess about perceived flaws in their body, which can include their limbs. (For more on the phenomenon, see Disordering Bodies for Disordered Minds.)

There is a condition called xenomelia, for example, in which individuals experience a strong feeling of discomfort or mismatch with one or more of their limbs, feeling that they do not belong to their body.

There is also a condition called blindness identity disorder (BID), also known as Body Integrity Identity Disorder, blindness subtype. Individuals with this condition have a strong desire to become blind. Some may even attempt to harm themselves in order to cause visual impairment.

As for Nick, binding his leg and imagining he has a stump relieves his dysphoria. But he can only maintain the strap for a few hours at a time. “I have no association with my right leg. It feels like it shouldn’t be there,” he says. “It’s similar to if you had a weird growth on your arm. It would revolt you and you’d want to get it taken off as quickly as possible. That’s how I feel about my leg but, obviously, I can’t get it removed.” Of course, Nick’s leg is not a weird growth on his arm. It is a limb he was born with.

Not all people with body dysmorphia have a desire to amputate a limb or be blinded. Should those who do be able to find a doctor who will surgically remove an arm or a leg—and charge them an arm and a leg to do it? I’m sorry for the sarcasm, but this is a money making operation. That the fees charged in the Smith case was returned to the National Health Service (NHS) is a function of state-run health care. The amputations occurred privately. The United States healthcare is largely private and for-profit. Should eyes be surgically removed for those who wish to be sighted? Is this desire be attributed to a new type of Oedipal complex? (See Making Patients for the Medical-Industrial Complex.)

The Atlantic covered the phenomenon in 2000 in the article “A New Way to Be Mad.” Carl Elliott writes, “The phenomenon is not as rare as one might think: healthy people deliberately setting out to rid themselves of one or more of their limbs, with or without a surgeon’s help. Why do pathologies sometimes arise as if from nowhere? Can the mere description of a condition make it contagious?”

These are questions that need answering. The second more so than the first. Maybe we will never explain why a person with no deformities feels his body is in some way deformed. In genuine cases, it seems mostly likely a defect in the brain’s capacity to properly map the body. But how could one tell an authentic case from a delusion? And why would it matter? Would that justify mutilating a person’s body?

As for the second question, we know from our experience with anorexia nervosa, cutting, and Tourette syndrome that among the risk factors there is the problem of social contagion. (See Why Aren’t We Talking More About Social Contagion?)

Anorexia nervosa is a serious psychiatric disorder characterized by a distorted body image and an intense fear of gaining weight. Individuals with anorexia often restrict their food intake, leading to significant weight loss and, in severe cases, malnutrition. The disorder typically begins in adolescence or early adulthood and is more common in women than in men.

Anorexia nervosa can have serious physical and psychological consequences. The physical consequences may include amenorrhea (absence of menstruation), cardiovascular complications, gastrointestinal problems, and osteoporosis. The psychological consequences may include depression, anxiety, social withdrawal, and suicidal thoughts or behaviors.

The exact causes of anorexia nervosa are not fully understood, but it is thought to be a complex interplay of environmental and psychological factors. Some of the risk factors for anorexia include a family history of eating disorders, certain personality traits such as perfectionism or neuroticism, and cultural pressures to be thin.

Cutting behavior, also known as self-harm or non-suicidal self-injury, is a psychiatric disorder that involves deliberately harming oneself without the intention of causing death. Cutting behavior can take many forms, including cutting, burning, scratching, hitting oneself, or other types of self-injury.

Cutting behavior is often associated with underlying mental health conditions, such as anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and borderline personality disorder (BPD), which is a cluster B type personality disorder I have discuss before on Freedom and Reason. Cutting may be a way for individuals to cope with intense emotions, feelings of worthlessness, or a sense of alienation from self and others.

As with anorexia, cutting is more common among adolescents and young adults, particularly those who have experienced trauma or abuse. And like anorexia, cutting behavior can have serious physical consequences, including infection, scarring, and nerve damage.

With regard to anorexia, research has found that individuals who have friends or family members with an eating disorder are more likely to develop an eating disorder themselves. Exposure to media images of thin models and celebrities has been shown to contribute to the development of body dissatisfaction and disordered eating behaviors in some individuals.

Perhaps you have heard about the phenomenon of “Anna,” is a personified way of being used to convey a pro-anorexia, or “pro-ana,” subculture that has over the last several years emerged online. For the “pro-ana” community, anorexia is viewed as a lifestyle choice rather than a serious mental health disorder. Within this community, individuals who struggle with anorexia are often referred to as “Anna,” and the disorder is often romanticized and portrayed in a positive light.

Some individuals who participate in the “Anna” community view anorexia as a way to achieve a certain aesthetic or idealized body type, while others view it as a means of gaining control over their lives or coping with emotional distress. The community often promotes extreme weight loss methods and encourages individuals to engage in disordered eating behaviors.

With regard to cutting behavior, the practice can spread among groups of adolescents and young adults, particularly in peer group and social settings. As with the pro-anorexia community, this is in part due to the behavior being viewed as a way to cope with emotional distress or to gain attention or social acceptance. There is also evidence to suggest that exposure to media coverage of self-harm may contribute to the normalization and spread of the behavior.

So the second question has a well-known answer. Social contagion is a very real phenomenon. If limb removal were ever normalized and enjoyed in back of it an opportunity for individuals to be part of something bigger than oneself, an opportunity to belong to a community, an explanation for why one feels uneasy with the world, then we might have a rash of cases of people wanting to remove body parts. The “new way to be mad” would become, at least among some circles, a new identity. It might be identified as an ideology, something like “Transableism.” (See Sanewashing—It’s More Widespread Than You Might Think. Also, this 2014 article in Psychology Today, “Out on a Limb.”)

In the Scottish case, Smith continued practicing “medicine.” The government never investigated him. Should Smith have been allowed to continue his work? How about prison? To be sure, voluntary amputation was banned in the end (was it criminalized?), and as a general rule ex post facto consequences are problematic. But what sociopath thinks it’s okay to remove the healthy body parts of individuals suffering from psychiatric disorders?

The Smith case is reminiscent of the Nazi medical experiments. Should there be a Nuremberg 2.0? What other analogous medical experiments are being performed today? Medicalizing atrocities doesn’t make them any less atrocious.

* * *

Source for the historical case: “Surgeon Amputated Healthy Legs.” British Medical Journal. February 5, 2000: 320(7231): 332.

What is religion? Religion is a set of beliefs, practices, and values that are focused on the worship of one or more deities and a domain of supernatural things. One finds in religion transcendent entities, such things as angels, demons, and souls. These are things of such a nature that they resist falsification using scientific methods. Their truth depends instead on authority, charisma, and faith.

Religion finds people seeking ecstasy and euphoria, often in contrast to the state of their current lives, where they experience despair and dysphoria. As a philosopher suggested long ago, religion is a painkiller. But religion is not only rapture and opiate. The content of religion includes ethical codes and moral principles, as well as rituals and ceremonies that guide and shape the way individuals live their lives and mark transitions across statuses. Religion also creates the statuses.

Religion can be found in different forms, including organized faiths with established institutions and structures, cults with religious-like characteristics, and individualized and personal spiritual practices. Religion provides a framework not only for understanding the meaning and purpose of life, as well as providing guidance for personal and societal morality, but establishes meaning and purpose. We are told that religion causes people to do great things. Religion also causes people to do horrible things.

Scientology is a religion founded in the 1950s by science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard. Its beliefs and practices are based on Hubbard’s book Dianetics, which theorizes that negative experiences called “engrams” are stored in the mind but can be removed through a process called “auditing,” allowing the subject to achieve personal; freedom and spiritual enlightenment. Scientology teaches that individuals have in them an entity known as “thetans,” which is their true identity. By relieving the emotional and psychological stress caused by engrams, the person may realize his authentic self.

The organization has faced controversy over the years, with former members alleging abusive practices and financial exploitation. The church has also been accused of engaging in aggressive legal and extra-legal tactics to silence its critics. The church is also known for recruiting celebrities and using them to push the faith. Despite the controversies, there are tens of thousands of adherents of Scientology found throughout the world.

Imagine you and your seven-year-old meet with his second-grade teacher for a parent-teacher conference. You enter the room and notice flags and placards with symbols on them. Also, the teacher is wearing a button with one of the symbols. And a necklace with a pendant. You ask her what the symbols are, and she tells you that they are symbols representing Scientology. She tells you that she wishes to create an inclusive and safe space for children who are drawn to the ideas Hubbard presents in Dianetics. An increasing number of students express interest in these ideas, she tells you. She shows you a picture book in the classroom based on Dianetics.

It’s not that you don’t know what Scientology is. But you did not know its symbols. You are surprised to see a religious system being promoted in this way in your child’s school. You don’t want to fly off the handle until you know more. So, when you get home, you open Google and do some research.

You soon learn that one of the two major parties that governs your country, the Democratic Party, has taken up Scientology and is aggressively institutionalizing the religion across the administrative state. You learn that bureaucrats in the technocratic apparatus are required to undergo mandatory training in the doctrine, its jargon, and the practices of dianetics. You knew already that members of this religion were in the entertainment business, especially Hollywood. Given the relationship between Hollywood and the Democratic Party, the advocacy of Scientology among Party members makes sense, you guess. But you had no idea of the depth of the association. 

You keep digging and find that, over the last several decades, Scientology has been taught in American colleges and universities. Graduates of institutions of higher learning leave with at least an appreciation of the religion, if not feeling drawn to it, some converting. You learn that graduate students are trained in dianetics and carry it into their professional careers. You also learn that the health care industry has taken up the theory of engrams and has been engaged in auditing children with the goal of removing the engrams so that the children can achieve personal freedom and spiritual enlightenment.

You learn from your second grader that the school has been inviting members of Scientology to come to the library and read books about Scientology and encourage the children to explore the religion by having them engage in exercises. Some parents, you learn, take their kids to fun events hosted by Scientologists. There is one coming up, in fact. There is a flier in his backpack. Your child asks you if he can go. Definitely not. He tells you he hates you and runs to his room and slams the door.

The world you thought you knew now feels very strange. How did this happen? Doesn’t the United States have a rule that separates church and state and prevents public school teachers from using the classroom to teach students about Scientology?

Is Dianetics in the middle school and high school libraries? Is so, how did it get there? You ask your older daughter about it, and she tells you that Hubbard’s book has always been there. You can tell that she wonders what’s wrong with the book. What about it, she asks. Everybody is talking about the ideas in that book, she tells you. She tells you that she discusses the ideas with her friends in chat rooms on social media. You think to yourself: What’s going on here?

She asks if you are a “suppressive person.” What is that? That’s the term used by Scientologists to describe a person who is considered an enemy of the religion and its goals. According to doctrine, a suppressive person is someone who actively seeks to impede or undermine Scientology’s progress, as well as the progress of its individual members. She tells you that Scientology views suppressive persons as a negative influence on society and encourages its members to avoid contact with them. They are also encouraged to harass and ostracize those who are critical of Scientology.

You go back on Google and learn there are indeed reports from former members of the religion that they were encouraged or even required to go no contact with family members deemed antagonistic towards the faith. You learn about how Scientologists harass and ostracize people they see as enemies. It’s all very scary and you think about your son sulking in his room and the way your daughter looked at you when you asked these questions. You start to feel threatened.

You start talking to others about it and they look at you like you’re a space alien. You didn’t know about this? No. You were cause unaware. Why would you think something like this could happen? You trusted your institutions to protect you and your children.

Then you make the mistake of arguing that it is improper for public schools and the government to push a religion. This is a theocratic arrangement, you argue, and we live in a secular society. Is this even a religion, they wonder. Isn’t this sound science? Aren’t these valid categories? Aren’t thetans real? Doctors are auditing children, are they not? Why would the health care industry do anything to hurt children? The Democrats are progressives. How could they harm children? This is the same party trying to take guns off the street. The Democrats care about people.

You compound your mistake by pointing out how absurd Hubbard’s thesis is and how many young people will be harmed by being pulled into a system known to engage in abusive practices and financial exploitation. You’re informed that you’re out of step, that you’re either ignorant or bigoted. Literally everybody disagrees with you. They tell you that, far from being abusive and exploitative, auditing has saved many young people from the engrams that kept them from realizing their true selves and living authentic lives.

On Thursday, March 30, more than a thousand activists gathered at Tennessee’s state capitol to demand restrictive gun laws. The House of Representatives’ legislative business was brought to a halt when three elected Democratic Party representatives, barking commands through a bullhorn, led the activists into the capitol building. There were no arrests.

Protestors began assembling inside and outside the state capitol in the morning. They confronted lawmakers as they arrived for legislative sessions. Later, a crowd gathered at War Memorial Plaza, where various speakers spoke about gun control following The Covenant School shooting on March 27, where a trans man murdered six Christians, including three children.

While the House of Representatives debated an education bill, the three Democrats violated the chamber’s rules by approaching the podium without being recognized to speak. The three were Rep. Justin Jones, D-Nashville, Rep. Justin Pearson, D-Memphis, and Rep. Gloria Johnson, D-Knoxville.

Section 12 of the Tennessee Constitution reads: “Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence of two-thirds, expel a member, but not a second time for the same offense; and shall have all other powers necessary for a branch of the Legislature of a free state.”

If leading a mob into the Tennessee state capitol building with bull horns and shutting down the democratic process such that it necessitated police intervention is not the disorderly behavior Section 12 is referring to, then to what on earth could those who authored that passage have been referring? Indeed, it looked an awful lot like what Democrats call an “insurrection.” Even more so, in fact; in this case, party members actually incited the mob to occupy the capitol.

Before getting to the expulsion and Nashville’s shameful vote to reinstate one of the Democrats, readers need to recognize that, contradicting these comparisons of these actions of the “Tennessee Three” to the civil rights activists of yesteryear, these protests were not intended to expand a civil right but rather to diminish one. They were seeking to abridge the fundamental right to self-defense.

This was not a violation of a house rule to throw rules and laws into question for the sake of enlarging the scope of rights to which citizens are entitled, such as the right of the people to keep arms to defend their homes and persons from rampant crime and violence on the streets of Memphis and Nashville, two of the most unsafe cities in America. This was a demand to restrict that right by attention-seeking personalities in violation of democratic rules—a demand to make it more difficult for their imperiled brothers and sisters to effect their human right to self-defense.

It was therefore all the more disturbing to listen to a man with no understanding of democratic norms or practices or American history exploit an opportunity to engage at length in an obnoxious exercise of anti-white bigotry using an affected voice in the preacher’s cadence ostensible to diminish the rights of those most subjected to the failure of progressive government to protect themselves.

In place of an orderly demand for enhancing public safety was disorderly action by disordered persons driven by inflated ego and an obnoxious sense of entitlement. Knowing that there were people watching the speech with tears in their eyes and muttering “Amen” just made the spectacle all the more troubling.

Despite the body of that chamber having spoken in accord with the state constitution concerning the fate of Justin Jones and his comrades, the Nashville Metropolitan Council voted Monday to return Justin Jones to the state legislature. The thirty-six council members at the meeting unanimously supported reinstating Jones, even suspending its rules to allow an immediate vote instead of holding a month-long nomination period.

I learned Monday night, that Jones was involved in assaulting a legislator at the capitol in 2019. Jones, attending a protest to remove from the capitol a statue of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, assaulted Republican Glen Casada. Jones was charged with two counts of misdemeanor assault and one count of disorderly conduct. Lawmakers attempted to ban him from the capitol then, since he represented a danger to legislators and others there on legitimate business. A judge blocked the ban.

That’s not all. Jones has been removed from and arrested during other protests, including a 2020 protest in the wake of the George Floyd’s death. That he was arrested indicates that he was not involved in peaceful protests.

I want to be clear: being arrested for civil disobedience is not necessarily wrongful conduct in a moral sense. But, unlike the protests against Jim Crow in the 1950s and 1960s, the riots of 2020 lacked the moral imperative. The protest against alleged racially disproportionate killing by police was a contrived matter.

A year later, Jones faced additional charges for allegedly throwing a traffic cone at a car during the protest.

The greatest predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Jones is sure to pull another stunt like he did on March 30. But this doesn’t matter to the politicians in Nashville. Preventing the process that would find a replacement for Jones, one who didn’t assault a legislator or lead an insurrection at the capitol just so the progressives running Nashville into the ground can stick a thumb in the eye of the state of Tennessee—this is what democracy look like?

Of course, we are dealing with a different definition of democracy. Progressives are not confused about what democracy is. When progressives use the word they mean two things: (a) rule by the corporate state through the technocratic apparatus; (b) action taken by their side beyond democratic norms and processes. In this context, (a) sees armed citizens of a certain ilk as a threat to its continued existence; (b) uses the occasion of mass murder by a disordered person to push (a)’s agenda.

Rinse, repeat.

You will note that progressives want to take away rifles of a certain sort, firearms they brand “weapons of war,” i.e., semi-automatic rifles. They seek to ban or restrict these weapons despite the fact that most gun homicides are perpetrated with handguns. In fact, more homicides are perpetrated with knives, and even fists and feet (personal weapons), than are perpetrated with “weapons of war.”

Why are progressives obsessed with these weapons? Because these are the weapons that would prove most effective against the agents of an administrative state when the final abolition of democratic-republican government arrives. Democrats are thinking in terms of war (abroad and at home).

This is why, for progressives, populism, i.e., the actual maximal democratic norms and processes, is declared “fascism.” Just as progressives redefine democracy to fit illiberal desire, they redefine opposition to corporate state authoritarianism as its opposite.

Like the Orwellian slogans, “Ignorance is strength,” “Freedom is slavery,” and “War is peace,” the desire here is to produce in the public mind a confusion that renders the slogan “Fascism is democracy.”

The reflex of progressivism is projection: conservatives and liberals are accused of what progressives are. This requires doublethink, a technique of control I have written about in the past and will again in greater depth in the near future.

This is why it is so important to read—or reread—Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. You must understand how the corporate state uses language to disrupt normal consciousness. The public is being conditioned to believe, depending on what is convenient for the corporate state, that the most sure things in the world are not sure at all or that a thing is the opposite of what we have always known it to be.

All eyes are on now on Shelby County to see what happens with Justin Pearson, the Memphis Democrat who was also expelled for his participation in the insurrection at the capitol.

I describe myself as an atheist. But, really, why does someone who is not religious need a label? Religion is a thing. Its absence is nothing. It is no thing.

To be sure, the word means “absent god.” But that’s not what most people think when they hear that word. For them, the atheist is something. He is some thing.

Moreover, to be absent some thing conveys some thing is missing, some thing one should have—that one is supposed to have.

But not having god in one’s life is not like missing a leg. Being godless is different from being legless. I am not godless because of accident, war, disease, or deformity. I am godless because I do not believe in God. And I don’t have to in a free society.

The labels “atheism,” “heathen,” “infidel,” “pagan” have long been used to persecute people for not being some thing. But the atheist is not someone who chooses to step into oppression. The label creates the status that oppresses him. He is being othered for no good reason. He is not othering himself.

The atheist is a man who would rather not be forced to believe that which he does not. Is he to be responsible for his oppression because he rejects the beliefs of others? Why must he be included in their belief system? Why must he be burdened by the labels of believers?

The term “atheism” is lot like the term “uncircumcised.” The woman tells her girlfriends at diner, “He is uncircumcised.” “I’ve never been with an uncircumcised man,” a girlfriend says. “That’s gross.” It creates an assumption. It makes the women wonder why he’s not. Not everywhere, of course; where circumcision is the norm, being uncircumcised means the man is on the outside, even if only a little. He may feel a need to explain himself.

Do we say that women who have not had mastectomies are “unmastectomized”? No? Then why “uncircumcised”? Is it because circumcision is a religious thing? Then imagine a cult or a religion where girls are mastectomized to indicate their membership in the tribe, to show their commitment to the doctrine, to express belonging to the group. I suppose we might then have unmastectomized women.

How about that term “cisgender”? The term, appearing at the end of the twentieth century, denotes a person whose gender identity corresponds with the sex registered for them at birth. Simply put, to be cisgender is to be not transgender.

Why is there a word for not transgender? “I am not transgender.” “Most people aren’t. Why are you telling me this? Why is this relevant?” “Because I am a thing. I am ‘cisgendered.’ I was ‘assigned’ male at birth and identify as a man. I thought you should know.” “I don’t care.”

If I reject the cisgender label then for many I am a bigot—and the label will be imposed anyway.

Why should those who don’t believe in supernatural things or who don’t alter their bodies get labels? Do those without tattoos have a label? They have no tattoos. Most people don’t. More and more people do. But, like religion, circumcision, and many other things, people aren’t born with tattoos. What are these people called?

Those who don’t get tattoos are not doing some thing. They are being the way they are. But if tattooing ever becomes the norm… What if those with tattoos wish to label those who don’t with a special word? Let’s make up a label and apply it. When people resist their new designation, we shall call them as bigots. They are, after all, tatouazophobes.

Let’s put on our sociology caps and answer the general question raised by the pattern. There is a explanation for why things work this way. It’s a method of “othering,” of making stubborn and wayward individuals live within the scope of an ideology and marginalizing them for refusing to accept the doctrine or participate in the rituals of those who do.

That those who are not included get a label tells the rational observer that there is a power relation and indicates those who control that relation. Those who control the relation may be the majority. They may be a minority. They may be a constellation of minorities. We are interested in the source of power.

Whatever the source of power, it is a truism that those who have the power to define words and label things have the power to control minds. By controlling thought, they control people. One of the most powerful way to control thought is by establishing the assumptions that steer those thought away from some thing towards another.

Why aren’t your pronouns in your profile and signature line? Because I am not religious. I can’t control what the believers call me. That is for sure. Can I control what I call myself? That’s less certain.

Update (April 17): I did not know about this case until yesterday. This occurred in Australia. Evie Amati, a trans woman (his parents named him Karl), seriously wounded a man and a woman at a 7-Eleven in Sydney in January 2017. Security footage showed Amati approaching his first victim, Ben Rimmer, as he waited to buy a meat pie. After a brief conversation, he struck Mr Rimmer in the face, knocking him to the ground with a severe facial wound and facial fractures. He then attacked his second victim, Sharon Hacker, near the door, fracturing her skull. Amati turned on a third customer, Shane Redwood, but he shielded himself using his backpack. Amati was arrested shortly afterwards. When the BBC initially reported this story, it left out the fact that Amati is trans gender. It finally clarified the story two years later. I am sharing the video below.

In 2017, transgendered person Evie Amati had a bad tinder date, triggering gender dysphoria and took it out on strangers at a 7-11. Now serving 14 years in prison for attempted murder. The court ruled that the original sentence was “manifestly inadequate.” https://t.co/ufZx2TiB68

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) June 21, 2022

Update (April 12): Another murder by a trans identifying individual.

#Portland media & police still refuse to mention the suspect accused of brutally murdering a cab driver on Easter Sunday is #trans. I first broke that report & spoke with @IngrahamAngle about the latest updates in the murder of Reese McDowell Lawhon. The suspect was arrested days… pic.twitter.com/QGE3yuX6yB

— Andy Ngô 🏳️‍🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) April 12, 2023

* * *

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”—George Orwell, Animal Farm

“In conclusion, then, we may say that the difference between delusion and illusion lies in the impact that belief has on the individual holding it. Delusion is a system of ideas that is not shared by other people, and that is of such a nature as to make its possessor unhappy or a menace to society. Illusion, on the other hand, is a false belief that is not susceptible to correction by outside evidence, but that serves the needs of the individual’s emotional life.”—Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion

I begin today’s blog with clear evidence of corporate state disinformation and official state suppression of critics concerning the rise of militant trans activism represented by a single case: the government harassment of Mitchell Watley, an illustrator of children’s books, and the corporate cancelling of his career.

Watley will have a preliminary hearing April 11 in Juneau, Alaska, on a single count of “terroristic threatening” for allegedly placing notes in businesses that included an assault rifle superimposed over the trans gender flag with accompanying text reading: “Feeling Cute Might Shoot Some Children.”

The New York Post frames the story this way: “An Alaskan children’s book illustrator was dropped by his publisher after he was arrested for posting menacing, transphobic notes targeting children at local businesses. Mitchell Thomas Watley, 47, is accused of putting the threatening notices in public places throughout the capital city of Juneau beginning on Friday—the International Day of Transgender Visibility.”

The official complaint against Watley reads in part: “Officers spoke to Mitchell, who said (in essence) that he was in fear of the recent transgender school shooter and took it upon himself to print out and distribute these leaflets.” Rexene Finley, the assistant district attorney, told the judge in court that Watley “targeted our most vulnerable populations.”

The image in question is not Watley’s invention. You can see in the above image, as well as in the image below, members of Antifa, a street-level manifestation of the New Fascism, wearing a patch with an AR-15 superimposed onto a trans flag with the slogan “DEFEND EQUALITY.” Go here to find for purchase numerous banners, buttons, patches, and posters with the image and the slogan. Next time you are reviewing photos of Antifa, pay attention to the uniform. See any patches from the Etsy catalog?

Obviously, the image doesn’t mean what the assistant district attorney and the media suggest it does. The reality is that the image signals something very different, something the corporate state does not want the public to know, namely that this is a patch worn by trans activists to signal to opponents of gender ideology that violent trans action, including gun violence, is now part of the movement’s growing militancy, justified by growing resistance to the ideology.

You’re supposed to be upset over the Tennessee legislature removing members from its body for commandeering the house floor and inciting mob violence at the state capitol. Demagogues took to the house floor to distract you from thinking about the actual problem. It wasn’t guns that killed the six people at a Nashville Christian school. It was a person with thoughts in her head. But progressives want you to make a fetish of guns so they can advance a project to disarm the population of weapons that allow them to effectively counter state oppression.

They are now distracting you with rhetoric about “racism” and “white supremacy.” The two men removed from the Tennessee legislature were black so therefore racism and white supremacy. But there are several members in the Tennessee legislature who are black. Most of them are still in the legislature. Why? They didn’t commandeer the floor of that body with bullhorns and lead a mob in disrupting the democratic process. Expelling two members from the Tennessee legislature wasn’t about race. It was about making sure those elected to serve the people don’t use the cover of the electoral process to instead thwart the democratic process they were sworn to uphold. It was the act of egregiously violating the rules of the House and the principles of a free society that caused that body to expel these men.

Nor does Watley’s text mean what the assistant district attorney and the media suggest it does. When you know what the image is actually about, the meaning of the text associated with the image become obviously a sarcastic warning about the rise in violence by trans activists and a reference to the Nashville children murdered by a trans man. It’s not Watley threatening to kill children. It is Watley telling people that trans identifying people are killing children. And they are.

Audrey Hale, the Nashville shooter who murdered six people, including three children, isn’t the first mass murderer identifying as trans gendered. Last year, Anderson Lee Aldrich (seen in the photo above surrendering to police) killed five people at a nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Aldrich identifies as nonbinary. Alec McKinney, who identifies as a trans man, teamed up with Devon Erickson in 2019 to shoot several students as a Denver-area school. They killed one person and wounded several others. A 2018 shooting at a Maryland warehouse that left five dead was perpetrated by a trans woman named Snochia Moseley.

According to a local news source, police just disrupted the plans of a fifth trans identifying person in Colorado Springs, Colorado. William Whitworth, a male who now goes by the name “Lilly,” has been charged with two counts of criminal attempt to commit murder in the first degree, criminal mischief, menacing and interference with staff, faculty, or students of educational institutions. Lilly was planning to “shoot up” multiple schools in Colorado Springs.

Look at what this cult has done to our youth. @Riley_Gaines_ was barricaded in a room at San Francisco State University Thursday night after she was assaulted following a speech to students about saving women's sports.pic.twitter.com/sFWLc65Ull

— Billboard Chris 🇨🇦🇺🇸 (@BillboardChris) April 7, 2023

My last blog covered the assault of Riley Gaines by trans activists at San Francisco State University during the Turning Point USA event. The university’s administration, without mentioning the assault on Gaines, praised the trans activists who perpetrated the assault.

Breaking🚨📰: San Francisco State University has just released a statement to students after @Riley_Gaines_ was assaulted and held hostage by them.

The University VP commended the trans activists for their “tremendous bravery’’ and described them as behaving “peacefully”.… pic.twitter.com/GJWRAxgSQe

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) April 9, 2023

Here is a video of the trans activist mobbing of Kellie Jay Keen, aka Posie Parker, in Aukland, New Zealand. Keen has just been assaulted along with several other women. (See also here.) What you are seeing very clearly in the crowd, alongside the true believers driven to mob violence by ideology, the convergence in the movement by individuals with mood and personality disorders.

What you are seeing very clearly in the crowd, alongside the rabid true believers driven to violence by gender ideology, are individuals with disordered personalities who have found in this movement a way to transition their mental illness into what progressives tell them is a positive expression of social justice. We saw this in San Francisco in the mobbing of Riley Gaines, who was assaulted and kidnapped for more than three hours while the hostage takers demanded money for her release. A sickness was clearly apparent in the actions and on the faces of members of the mob—and San Francisco State University then praised the mob and offered them counseling without mentioning the victim of misogynistic violence.

We are told that the rise in violence committed by trans identifying people is a myth. My Google news aggregator is teaming with stories claiming to debunk the myth. There is also the return of the sentiment, often heard during the period in which another violent extremist movement, Islamic terrorism, that one cannot blame an entire group because a member of that group commits an act of violence. Obviously those making this claim are hypocrites given how easily they accuse the entire white race of enjoying skin-color privilege and for harboring at the very least implicit bias and unconscious prejudice for black people—and white isn’t an ideology or a religion operating on doctrine. Contrast being white with the act of preaching a gospel of vengeance, and portraying the adherents to the doctrine that underpins that gospel as a persecuted minority morally privileged to use any means necessary to defend itself. As with islamism, gender ideology attracts and transitions disordered people into agents of harassment, intimidation, and violence.

* * *

The cultivation of an antagonistic social movement is bearing fruit. The construct “gender identity” as it exists in gender ideology/queer theory constitutes for many of those so identified a re-coding of their personality disorders (PDs), including cluster B type disorders, as a positive thing. (The intersection of gender identity disorder/gender dysphoria and personality disorders is demonstrated in the research literature. For examples, see here, here, and here. There are more, and I encourage readers to explore the matter further.)

Cluster B type are a group of PDs characterized by dramatic or erratic behavior, emotional dysregulation, and impulsivity. One can see an overrepresentation of this class of disorders among trans activists, who are involved in acts of intimidation and terrorism across the globe. This is an important matter to address, especially in light of the normalizing and mainstreaming—and amplifying—of these personality types.

The four disorders in this cluster are antisocial (ASPD), borderline (BPD), histrionic (HPD), and narcissistic (NPD). ASPD is characterized by a disregard for the rights of others, a lack of empathy or remorse, and a tendency to engage in deviant or impulsive behavior. BPD is characterized by instability in mood, self-image, and relationships, and a tendency to engage in impulsive and self-destructive behaviors. HPD is characterized by excessive attention-seeking behavior, emotional instability, and a tendency to engage in dramatic or exaggerated expressions of emotion. NPD is characterized by a grandiose sense of self-importance, a lack of empathy for others, and a strong need for admiration and attention. You can see from these descriptions the likelihood of compounding disorders.

Historically, treatment for PDs has typically involved a combination of medication and psychotherapy, as well as support from family and friends (although in providing this support one must be careful not to be drawn into an abusive or exploitative relationship). One might think it is still important for individuals with these disorders to seek professional help from qualified mental health professionals But in the current environment this poses a risk; what was heretofore treated as a mental illness is now affirmed as an identity. Young people with PDs are redirected to gender clinics where they are put on a path to gender transitioning, first social, next medical, the latter now a billion dollar industry where they will become life-long patients.

Gender identity is an ideological construct that, by redefining PDs and giving them a cultural and social purpose, not only disguises and obfuscates these disorders, as well as frequently associated emotional and mood disorders, but turns those in need of psychiatric help into subalterns for the corporate state project to dismantle the American republic.

One need not to sign on the theory I have been advancing about the corporate state project on Freedom and Reason to see the obfuscation and to know that this development is not benign. Whatever the motives behind the transitioning of personality disorders to gender identities, the results have been a rise in harassment and violence against members of society who do not subscribe to this ideology. Those who advocate the ideology are responsible for its consequences whether or not they are working consciously to advance the transnational and transhumanist agenda.

Gender ideologues tell society that if the majority is skeptical of or resists the claim that a person can change her or his sex, that gender is either a soul-like entity that inhabits bodies (including wrong bodies) or so disconnected from sex that it can be whatever individuals wants it to be, then the majority is plotting and perpetrating a genocide against those who have proclaimed gender ideology as their faith. They can, therefore, expect the “trans community” to fight back. That is, having asked the public to deny reality and affirm delusional beliefs that advance an illusion of gender so constructed in all its quasi-religious character, public rejection of the doctrine justifies extreme action on the part of the believers.

If this ideology reaches a person with an antisocial personality disorder, a person who is gathering weapons in preparation for killing those people this person believes wronged her, it teaches her that her disordered thinking is a valid identity, that she is really is a man trapped in a female body, that her imagined grievances are real, obviously real because others won’t affirm her delusions (forcing her to undergo puberty, etcetera), and her impulse is therefore also valid. She comes to believe that she has the right to and must defend herself against a genocide—to martyr herself for the cause.

The explanation obviates the need for mental health treatment, at least treatment that would take up the actual problem, and the disorder is not helped but valorized. Gender ideology transitions the personality disorder from a limitation on living a normal life into a force promising an extraordinary one, a transcendent identity, a real thing to be recognized and embraced, a source of legitimate political action, legitimizing the use of violence against her oppressors. It takes the pathological desire to violently lash out at others and empowers it by giving it a justification—the affected becomes an instrument of agency in solidarity with a group of believers. The affected becomes a suicide death machine.

We are waiting Audrey Hale’s manifesto. But based on the totality of the circumstances, it almost certain that Hale was a zealot moved to murder Christians because she believed they had wronged her. In fact, it seems so certain that if the manifesto does no contain a clear motive, or suggests one that doesn’t fit the circumstances, an objective observer might suspect official manipulation. The observer might consider whether the document is being censored and modified to hide the motive that would make this a hate crime or an instantiation of domestic terrorism.

The ideology provides the actor with the targets of her valid wrath. It constructs and defines her oppressors. The ideology points the mentally disordered person in a direction. It puts the gun in her hand. It instructs her to pull the trigger. Like all extremist ideologies, by manufacturing the identity, the ideology creates a worldview and peoples it with good and evil entities. It instills and heightens the paranoia and resentment necessary to motivate committed action. To paraphrase Buckle’s truism: gender ideology prepares the crime; the trans person commits it.

Violent and suppressive acts short of homicide abound. The many videos of trans activists (TRAs) harassing feminists and lesbians and shouting down and physically assaulting participants at women’s rights rallies illustrates the unhinged nature of many of those in this movement. Read aloud the slogans on their placards. Hear how they sound. Listen to the terms TRAs use to describe their enemies. Review the images of armed TRAs standing before the trans flag making terroristic threats (some of which I am sharing in this blog).

TRAs are openly using the language of war. Conservative Christians are portrayed as the principle enemy, described as “Nazis” and “fascists,” and of course “transphobes.” But even allies are being threatened (see video at the end of this blog). The enemy is portrayed as representing a mass desire to erase the existence of the trans people. What follows from an imagined existential threat taken as real? Should not those who are about to be genocided take up arms and defend themselves against the genociders? To be sure, not all trans identifying persons will go there. But the reality is that a lot are going there, and all it takes are as many who are to endanger the public.

Why do we condemn fascism? Why do we condemn Christian and Islamic extremism? Why do we condemn extremist ideologies? Not just because they are wrong, but also because they can result in terrorism and violence. To be sure, TRAs enjoy the First Amendment right to convey their paranoid delusions and gather in groups—they have the same right to speech and expression, assembly and association as we all do. That means that we also have the right to tell the truth about this dangerous and harmful ideology. And we have the right to gather together and organize against it, to seek through legislation rules that protect all of us, including trans identified people.

That’s what all this language about Nazis and fascists is about in the rhetoric of the trans activists. This worldview plagiarizes both the real and the mythical dynamics of good and evil in reality and stories of the distant and recent past. Indeed, stepping into oppression, gender ideology is the work of future-past. Parents, politicians, teachers—anybody who fails to affirm and celebrate the delusional is portrayed as “fascist” and “collaborator.” The steps of genocide are recited. The delusions of the paranoid are fed. The bomb was fused years ago. It’s a short fuse.

Just as in Islamism, where the critics of a form of religious extremism are portrayed as “Islamophobic,” so in gender ideology are the critics of this form of quasi-religious extremism portrayed as “transphobic.” In this ideology, the trans gender person becomes the moral equivalent of the Jew and those who do not accept his worldview become the Nazis (see below video). The illusion that ideology creates resonates with the delusions of mentally disordered individuals. The delusions are given definite form and certain content. The desire to carry out aggressive violence is rationalized as defensive action.

Imagine comparing yourself to six million murdered Jews simply because people don’t view you as a woman. What a complete whack job. pic.twitter.com/Zck1OiIuCV

— CAMILLE PAGLIA STAN✨ (@AgingWhiteGay) April 4, 2023

This is analogous to the Islamic extremist who shoots up a school blaming his actions, motivated by his beliefs, perpetrated on those who deny or criticize his beliefs, on the victims of his actions. Islam is the only true way to think about the world, so to his mind he is justified. That Allah is the only god and that law and policy and everything else flows from him is obvious. That Muhammad is his messenger must be true. This ideology must be defended—even with violence.

New bill in Canada would prosecute anyone that misgendered, criticised or protested against Transgenderism.

Anyone deemed “transphobic, homophobic or offensive” would face prosecution and a $25,000 fine. 🇨🇦

pic.twitter.com/aRli8ZKQJe

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) April 5, 2023

The demand that others respect preferred pronouns is indicative of theocratic desire. The admonition to avoid “dead-naming” the trans person is a prime indicator of the depth of faith-belief; the person believes they have killed their former self and are reborn in a differently gendered body that is what they say it is. Gender ideology seeks a theocratic order where its doctrines are effectively if not formally the state-sanctioned religion, punishing those who deny it are to be punished. Until that order is established, if the state won’t listen, then activists believe they must take matters into their own hands.

This is jihad and it moved a disordered person to enter a school and murder children, as well as moved the purveyors of this ideology to blame the victims. That Hale sought suicide by cop just cements the analogy. Hale was a suicide bomber.  There are more to come.

Just curious, at what stage of genocide does the “victimized” party start shooting up schools? pic.twitter.com/vNkGdyM2Hj

— Right Side of History™️ (@xxclusionary) March 29, 2023

We are told that there is no rise in mass shootings perpetrated by trans identifying people. That is not merely a myth, but that it is “anti-trans” to say otherwise. William Whitworth would have been the fifth trans identifying individual in only a handful of years to murder people had the police not intervened. Moreover, not all violence committed by trans identifying people and their allies involves murder. Indeed, murder constitutes only a small portion of the violent acts perpetrated by this movement—violence accompanying patterns of harassment and intimidation.

You will remember that we were told to ignore the terroristic actions of Islamists, that their beliefs and their choice of targets had nothing to do with their religion. We were told that most Muslims are peaceful, that Islam is a “religion of peace,” and that to suggest that the political-ideological motivations of the perpetrators of violence constituted “Islamophobia.” 

We are in the phase of awakening that involves the defenders of an antagonistic social movement trying to prevent objective observers from rationally grasping what is happening by intimidation and shaming. The downplaying of danger from groups the corporate state pushes is as predictable as the exaggeration of danger from groups the corporate state fears. We are told that white supremacists lurk everywhere and that Christian nationalism is on the move, while we are at the same time told to disbelieve that which we can see with our own eyes and hear with our own ears and know with our own minds. But for how much longer?

It is imperative to ask yourself why things happen in the way they do. Why is the corporate state pushing political-ideological agendas that not only have no benefit for the ordinary working class people who make up the vast majority of the country but that also disrupt the consciousness of their children. What are the ends that the corporate state seeks by turning children against their parents—indeed, by turning children against their own bodies?  

To more fully understand the religious character of trans gender movement, grasp that the genocide trans activists are warning about does not involve actually killing trans identifying people. The genocide is a symbolic one. It is the rational act of denying that a man can actually be a woman. The genocide occurs not in the material world but on the spiritual plane that constitutes the cosmology of the new religion. Because the belief that a man can be a woman depends on substituting for reality a slogan, it is vital that everybody believe that slogan.

I will leave you with this dialogue from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. O’Brien is torturing Winston in the Ministry of Love. “We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull. You will learn by degrees, Winston. There is nothing that we could not do. Invisibility, levitation—anything. I could float off this floor like a soap bubble if I wish to. I do not wish to, because the Party does not wish it. You must get rid of those nineteenth-century ideas about the laws of nature. We make the laws of nature.” He then says, “Nothing exists except through human consciousness.”

When Winston challenges O’Brien’s claim that the earth is as old humans by asking him about fossils, O’Brien asks, “Have you ever seen those bones, Winston? Of course not. Nineteenth-century biologists invented them. Before man there was nothing. After man, if he could come to an end, there would be nothing. Outside man there is nothing.” When Winston tried to remember the word for such fallacious thinking, O’Brien reminded him “that metaphysics is not your strong point. The word you are trying to think of is solipsism. But you are mistaken. This is not solipsism. Collective solipsism, if you like. But that is a different thing: in fact, the opposite thing.”

This reminds me of Sigmund Freud’s point in The Future of an Illusion where he distinguishes between “delusion” and “illusion.” Here are several passages that speak to the situation we face today with the quasi-religious system of gender ideology.

“We shall not be far wrong if we define a delusion as a system of ideas that is not shared by other people, and is of such a nature as to make its possessor unhappy or a menace to society. It is an obvious disadvantage if an individual has to admit to himself the full share of his own meanness, vileness, and shoddiness. In such circumstances, he will be sure to try and dispose of them in the minds of other people as intolerable qualities belonging to them. This he can do only by projecting them and by setting himself up in opposition to them as a paragon of virtue, a hero, or a saint.

“An illusion, on the other hand, is a false belief, a product of wish-fulfillment, which is not susceptible to correction by outside evidence. The difference between an illusion and a delusion is not a difference in the objective truth or falsity of the belief in question, but rather in the impact that belief has on the individual holding it. An illusion is a form of happiness that is available to everyone, and is thus not incompatible with social life.”

“The source of religious energies lies in the individual’s own emotional nature, and it is only through an illusion that this source can be rendered accessible to the conscious personality. To be sure, there are many forms of illusion, and it is not always easy to distinguish them from each other. But we shall not be far wrong if we define an illusion as a belief that is founded on a wishful fantasy, and that is maintained in the face of evidence to the contrary. An illusion is a false belief that is not amenable to correction by evidence, and that serves the needs of the individual’s emotional life.”

“An illusion is essentially a product of the imagination, and it is only through the imagination that we can overcome the limitations of reality. The imagination allows us to transform reality into a more satisfying form, and it is only through this transformation that we can find meaning and purpose in our lives. The function of religion is to provide individuals with a set of illusions that can help them to cope with the harsh realities of existence.”

The delusion that a disordered man possesses in which he believes he is a woman comes with the wish that he actually were. He suspects he really isn’t so he needs others to affirm him. Something as untrue as a man being a woman requires affirmation from everybody. When universal affirmation is not forthcoming, the man becomes mean and vile. If his delusion becomes an illusion, if his delusion is sustained by many millions affirming his disordered thinking, then he finds a ready vehicle for wish fulfillment. He is given a purpose alongside others who are also disordered in this way.

The threat to society becomes ever greater as disordered people come to the calling. Something happens when a thing nobody would wish on anybody else becomes a thing people want more than anything else: they are prepared to hurt other people to obtain it. A proselytizing religion spreads its denial of reality. And, like all such religions, those who resist the doctrine become despised and demonized, justifiably subjected to the vengeance of the righteous. No disbelievers makes the fiction finally real. Any person who declines to affirm the delusion—to celebrate the illusion—becomes an enemy of God. And so we have a terrorist movement.

There is a serious problem in America today. This movement is already extremely dangerous. When children are massacred for the sake of an ideology, we must at the very least call out the ideology that animates the monster. We have a moral obligation to condemn terrorism. I have a long history of calling out Christian nationalist violence, white supremacy, Islamic terrorism, etcetera—this history documented on this blog.

Progressives defend trans activism the way they defended Islamic terrorism. They believe that the victims of these terrorisms had it coming to them. Those with whom they disagree are unworthy victims—undeserving of sympathy. Remember how gleeful progressives were when a critic of mRNA gene therapy died of COVID-19?This attitude pervades the rank-and-file devotees of this ideology. Never being wrong combined with political extremism makes an individual so righteous in his beliefs that he can justify any level of immoral action. We see the glee of the psychopath in these actions. These are the traits of disordered persons.