The Minneapolis Church Shootings

You have no doubt heard, read, and seen, about another mass shooting; at a church in Minneapolis. The shooter was “trans.”

There is some dispute, as there always is with statistics. Some are saying transvestites are disproportionately likely to engage in such mass shootings. Others insist this is a myth. I submit that they are, and it is predictable that they will be.

Let me explain why.

First, anyone declaring themselves “trans” is a narcissist. It is an ego claiming the right and the ability to overrule the physical world: to decide its own sex in defiance of biology. This is equivalent to declaring yourself God—extreme hubris. Acting as the other sex also attracts attention, which the narcissist craves.

This is why there are suddenly so many transgenders, when the tendency was almost unheard of in North America or Europe a hundred years ago. It is because our childrearing has shifted to “unconditional love” and building “self-esteem,” encouraging narcissism.

Inevitably, this narcissism involves a desire to dominate those around you. You will insist on others submitting to your imposed reality; they are not to be left alone, but must be made to assent publicly to your claimed reality. They must not, for example, “dead-name” you. They must use your preferred pronouns, even when you are not present. This also establishes your command over the English language.

This is necessarily a spiritual or psychic dead end. In the end, reality around you will not bend to your will. This causes built up anger, frustration, despair: the symptoms classified by current psychiatry as “depression.” 

Unfortunately, psychiatry and any therapist you go to will not recognize the problem, will not give any advice, but just prescribe you pills for the reported symptoms: SSRIs to dull the despair and anxiety.

SSRIs, like alcohol, deaden emotions, and this includes empathy. They reduce anxiety by silencing the voice of conscience. So, while arguably helpful for true depressives, they exacerbate narcissism.

So you are more likely to act out your anger and frustration on those around you. You will want to punish the world for not submitting to you. You will especially want to influence and to harm children, because they seem most innocent and vulnerable—the domination is most complete. But you will also want to lash out at God, as he is your obvious rival for complete dominance.

It is all perfectly predictable, and we are seeing it again and again.

It is a criminal misdirection to call for a ban on guns. And it is a well-meaning but disastrous error to call instead for more funding for “mental health.” The mental-health complex is causing the problem. The problem is not transgenderism, as such, but narcissism, which may or may not be expressed in transgenderism; and the problem is prescribing SSRIs for narcissists.

A more religious society is the ultimate solution.

No Escape

 

Hockey Night on the CBC

 

According to this piece from the CBC, NHL players are “ostracizing” gay and transgender people by not wearing rainbow “gay pride” jerseys. We should perhaps be happy they do not go so far as to call it genocide. Brian Burke, of the Pittsburgh Penguins, insists that resistance on religious grounds makes no sense. He was, he says, born and raised a Catholic, and “I don’t see any conflict” between Catholicism and affirming—not just tolerating, but affirming, or, to use his exact word, “honouring”—gay sex.

Anyone who knows the catechism of the Catholic Church knows he is simply lying, or apostate. 

Paragraph 2357: “Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’ They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.”

Paragraph 296: “Among the sins gravely contrary to chastity are masturbation, fornication, pornography, and homosexual practices.”

The CBC interviewer, supposedly neutral, asks two gay advocates the leading question, “do you think religion is being used to disguise bigotry?” No advocate for religion, or for the dissenting players, is invited to give their point of view.

But one of the gay spokesmen gives the game away. Cyd Ziegler emotes, “I grew up Christian. I grew up hating myself, because I was gay. Because I felt that I would go to hell for eternity.” Bayne Pettinger agrees with him an endorses what he just said.

Obviously, then they know perfectly well that they are in opposition to Christianity and Christian beliefs. They know that Christianity teaches that gay sex, or endorsing gay sex, leads to hell. They are not prepared to live and let live; they want to ostracize Christianity from the NHL, or crush the conscience of individual Christians.

Cyd Ziegler insists otherwise: “The players have the right not to wear the jersey, if their teams allow it. But guess what? I have the right to criticize them.” 

This is a false parallel. The players are not criticizing gay sex. His demand is that they affirm it, or face criticism. There is a difference between objecting to speech, and objecting to silence. He wants compelled speech.

For a proper comparison, think of requiring the players to wear a scarlet A to affirm their support of adultery, or requiring them to endorse on camera theft or the telling of lies. Or, conversely, imagine him as a gay man required to come on the CBC to condemn gay sex; or risk losing his job and his livelihood.

The important and most interesting question here is why homosexuals and transvestites cannot be satisfied with tolerance, and insist on universal public affirmation. Why do they need to compel assent? Why, for that matter, do they need “gay pride parades”? Why do they even need to “come out of the closet”? Straight people, after all, have no parades on the topic of sex, and are content to and expected to remain in the closet their entire lives, keeping their sexual interests behind closed doors.

It is presumably because they have a guilty conscience. Gays and transgenders must constantly be reassured that they are not doing anything wrong, precisely because they at least suspect they are doing something wrong. And because the problem is their own conscience, they can never be satisfied by any speech or action taken by any other. Their demands will just keep escalating. And they will grow more hysterical, beginning to speak of “revenge” and “genocide.” Ultimately, quite possibly, leading to egregiously violent action, like shooting small children in a Christian school. For the Erinyes pursue them, and they are relentless.

Orestes pursued by the Erinyes

Sex and the Single Cell

 

Can you spot the difference? Need a minute?

The gospel reading last Sunday was this one:

“Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place.”

King James has the colourful “not one jot nor tittle.”

This is because the Law is the Logos, Christ himself, the order on which the cosmos is formed. Pseudo-Chrysostom comments:

“…since all things which should befall from the very beginning of the world to the end of it, were in type and figure foreshown in the Law, …, He therefore here declares, that heaven and earth should not pass till all things thus foreshown in the Law should have their actual accomplishment.”

There is a Law, a Logos, to the universe.

I have not been inclined to comment on the whole gender thing, because there is little to say, and saying it gets you in trouble. 

But here goes:

Gender is a grammatical concept. People do not have gender. Nouns do. People have sex.

There are only two sexes. This is a binary system.

If you are male, every cell is identifiably male. If you are female, every cell is identifiably female. But for the rare anomaly of an XXY in the 23rd chromosome pair, there is no ambiguity.

Women and men differ in many more ways that the visible shape of their sex organs. Women’s bodies are different from men’s in many appealing details. Their brains are also different.

It is a denial of reality for a man to declare himself a woman, or a woman to declare herself a man.

Denial of reality is delusional by definition. It is insanity.

It is not helpful to anyone to encourage a delusion. This is like encouraging an alcoholic to stay drunk. It is usually a way for people to avoid their problems.

Why do people want to deny the two genders? Because they want to deny binary systems as such. All binary systems are limiting to the human will. Each is a line you cannot cross. Gravity is annoying. Not being able to stay 18 forever is annoying. Not being able to eat some given apple is annoying. As a graffito seen during the Paris uprising of 1968 had it, “Be careful: even the ears have walls!” The border between life and death, human and non-human, self and other, is annoying. It prohibits abortion. Not to mention offing your inconvenient grandparents or Republican neighbour.

But the ultimate binaries are true and false, yes and no, Aristotle’s law of non-contradiction; and good and evil. These are the enemies that the non-binary really want to destroy.

No surprise that Biden’s transgender appointee as undersecretary of state for whatever turns out to steal other people’s luggage; or that transgender swimmer Lia Thomas worships Satan. Or that more men in prisons declare themselves transgender women than in the general population.

Vive la difference. 

“La difference”: there’s an example of gander.

Girls Just Want to Have Fun

 

The notorious story of the transgender teacher in Toronto that is now getting international coverage may not be what it seems. A tweet suggests this is a guy who was getting pressure from the administration for not being woke enough, so he is trying to troll them.

This is more believable to me than a transvestite shop teacher who wants to wear cartoonish prosthetic breasts.

Why Freedom of Speech is Such a Bad Idea

A violent criminal is executed by the state.

My chum Xerxes has recently put the current left-wing case for ending freedom of speech. It is instructive to examine.

He starts out, naturally, enough, with the case of Lindsay Shepherd at WLU. First, he introduces Jordan Peterson to his audience. Just as Shepherd did—isn't he guilty already of a thought crime? He writes:

Over the last 50 years, the revolt against “he” as the proper generic term for any unidentified person, and against the assumption that “man” includes women and “mankind” describes all humanity, has grown into an irresistible tide. But as always, there are holdouts – people who consider themselves immoveable objects stemming that tide. 

One of those holdouts, University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson, told the CBC’s Carol Off, "I don't recognize another person's right to decide what words I'm going to use, especially when the words they want me to use…are constructs of a small coterie of ideologically motivated people."

He probably gets away with admitting Jordan Peterson exists by misrepresenting him. Peterson is not opposed to using “him” or “her,” as he suggests, when specifying men or women. He is opposed to being legally required to use invented new pronouns like “ze,” “hem,” and so forth, at the discretion of some listener.

That is one good reason, perhaps, why Shepherd's professors went so unreasonably ballistic over showing him actually speaking in class. When you let him talk, you are no longer able to misrepresent his ideas.

Xerxes then also at least slightly misrepresents Lindsay Shepherd. He writes:

Wilfred Laurier University master’s student Lindsay Shepherd wanted her undergraduate class to think about the use of gender-neutral pronouns. So she showed them a short video clip of Peterson.

More exactly, what she showed was not a clip of Peterson; it was a clip of a debate in which Peterson participated. Xerxes makes it sound less even-handed than it was.

Then Xerxes comes down strongly against Shepherd and Peterson. He writes:

The issue is not about censoring someone’s freedom of speech. It’s about banishing speech that does harm.

That would be true, if he and the left had not redefined the word “harm.” In the dictionary (Oxford) it means “physical injury,” and that is how it has always been used in discussions of freedom of speech. As soon as you include as “harm” any speech someone does not like, there is no freedom of speech. None. If speech did not offend anyone, nobody would want to silence it in the first place. “Freedom of speech” defends offensive speech, or it defends no speech at all.

He compares Peterson's words to a poison or a disease, and writes:

Diseases, poisons, and toxins are not optional. One can’t justify them as personal choices.

Surely this is a hysterical claim. As must be obvious to anyone, words are not poisons or diseases, other than as a metaphor. Yes, words can hurt feelings; and in an ideal world, nobody's feelings would ever be hurt. But it is both impossible and pernicious to legislate against hurt feelings. For one thing, there is no objective test or evidence: anyone can claim that their feelings have been hurt, and, unlike a broken nose, it is impossible to adjudicate the matter. Do you, then, need to demonstrate an intent to hurt feelings? Almost as impossible. We cannot read one another's minds. Ban a specific selection of words? Inevitably arbitrary.

Almost as surely as an apple that falls from a tree will hit the ground, unless you strictly favour one group over another, that is, systematically discriminate, everything you might say would then become illegal. Anyone could, in principle, be declared a criminal at any time, because absolutely anything might offend someone. In the real world, of course, those in power would use this only against their enemies; or against some popularly despised scapegoat group.

At the same time, the speech that is most likely to offend someone is the speech that most needs to be heard: speech to express some new or unpopular idea or viewpoint. All new ideas are by definition unpopular—you are not popular if nobody has heard of you; and you are not going to be popular if you contradict what everyone believes to be true. Moreover, as John Stuart Mill pointed out, if any ideas are excluded a priori from the discussion, we no longer know—ever—what truth is. You see here the end of all human progress.

Consider, for example, that by criminalizing unpopular speech, and calling it violence, people like Xerxes are endorsing the crucifixion: they have declared Jesus a rightfully convicted violent criminal. They have condemned Socrates, Joseph Howe, Thomas Jefferson, Gandhi, Galileo, Darwin, Churchill, and Martin Luther King. All of them are now violent criminals. They have condemned those who spoke against slavery in the antebellum US South, or against Jim Crow in the 50s. They all offended with their words.

So, you might imagine, no problem. we will of course only make it illegal to hurt the feelings of socially oppressed groups.

Does not work. To begin with, you cannot count on always being in power yourself. Moreover, in principle, a truly oppressed group is never going to have the government on their side. More or less by definition, if the government is on your side, you are not oppressed. You hold the ultimate social power. Such discrimination will therefore always, necessarily, be in favour of those who already hold political and social power, and against those who do not. If there is even the slightest discrimination in a society, this will exaggerate and intensify it.

An instructive current example: in France, it is illegal to deny the Armenian holocaust. In Turkey it is illegal to say the Armenian holocaust happened.

John Stuart Mill also rightly pointed out that democracy is not possible without free speech. This is why even libel laws do not apply in Parliament. We must be able to freely discuss all ideas in order to come to an informed decision. Denying the general public the right to hear all views effectively excludes them from power. Smart move, for a totalitarian.

As Mill also pointed out, nobody has the moral authority to decide for anyone else what speech they ought or ought not to hear. That idea is intrinsically totalitarian and discriminatory. It presupposes that some people—those in power—are, in effect, omniscient.

Xerxes writes:

Similarly, we do not let our children play with, say, cyanide. Or plutonium. We don’t let them balance on the railing of a 27th floor balcony. We don’t let them run out into traffic. Because we know those things are dangerous.

This is telling. Aside from claiming, wrongly, that words by themselves have physical effects, he is also here seeing his fellow citizens as children. That is the totalitarian instinct. He is demanding the right to think for them. He is assuming his own absolute superiority to his fellow man. Not tenable. Xerxes is a fine chap, but he is not a divine being.

There are, it is true, proper limits to free speech. Libel and slander, most obviously; copyright infringement; perjury; divulging secrets counter to contract; and incitements to violence. The test is clear and simple: does the speech cause material harm?

Pornography, too, might be legislated against, at least without seriously infringing on free speech. Best not to; but not a vital issue. It does not cause material harm; but then too, it does not tend to express any important ideas. Excluding, as the old US Supreme Court formula had it, works “with redeeming social importance.”

Xerxes writes, in support of a limit on free speech:

I doubt if Professor Peterson would pepper his lectures with words like nigger, gook, chink, jap, or kraut. Or for that matter, with broad, floozy, or nympho. Let alone fairy, faggot, or – well, no, let’s not go there. Because we know how derogatory words can legitimize prejudice.

I am sure Peterson would not. But Xerxes is missing the point. It is one thing to say that using such words is bad manners—it is. Good manners are good; bad manners are bad. Yep. It is a very different thing to make what Michael Coren calls “social rudeness” illegal. Such things do not even rise to the level of immorality, let alone criminality, which requires a higher bar.

The law is a blunt and damaged instrument, subject to inevitable injustice, great expense, and to bullying by those with greater financial power. And any law is necessarily a limit on everyone's freedom, and so must be justified. We want to use the law sparingly. It is a last resort.

I think there is a current strong push on the left to end freedom of speech precisely because the governing bureaucracy—let's call it that, not “elite,” as the latter introduces too many ambiguities—feels endangered. People are thinking for themselves more and more. They are no longer dutifully listening to their betters. The gloves now come off. I think the attempt to clamp down is bound to fail; and the collapse may be sudden. But it may also get much nastier before it gets better.

The North Carolina Bathroom Wars

He or she needs to pee.

Readers are probably aware of the ongoing North Carolina Bathroom Wars. My Facebook feed is full of it. Major celebrities are cancelling appearances in the state. Not to mention protests and pullouts by many large corporations, notably Target stores.

This time, it seems, it's total war.

And yet, this is all about a law that changes nothing, and should be common sense.

Traditionally, men are restricted to men's public rest rooms, and women are restricted to women's. The current North Carolina law would simply continue this practice, which was and is under threat from new ordinances in places like Charlotte. All it adds is a regular, legal method of checking in case of dispute that does not violate anyone's privacy: by the sex shown on the birth certificate. It does not call for any new enforcement procedure: only that a sign be posted advising everyone which washroom to use.

Back in the 1970's, the feminist movement pushed for an “Equal Rights Amendment.” It failed, primarily because, given the logic of recent “separate but equal” decisions by the US courts, openly requiring equality of treatment before the law between men and women in the US Constitution would logically require integrated toilets. It was obvious then, and went without saying, that this was not in women's interest. Surely the reasons are obvious? As it happens, men and women are actually not the same. If nothing else, women can get pregnant as a result of sex, and men cannot. Ergo, women's interests in any encounter between the sexes need to be protected. Enforcing unisex washrooms amounts to an open door, literally, for rapists, sexual molesters, pederasts, and voyeurs. Equal rights in this case are a violation of women's rights to privacy, security of the person, and (for example, for those, such as orthodox Muslim women, who still believe in the virtue of modesty) freedom of conscience.

Forty or so years later, the left will no longer even listen to such counter-arguments. They want unisex washrooms. The N.C. bill designed to preserve separate restrooms, and titled, to make the intent clear, “The Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act,” is instead always and only referred to in the mainstream media as the “anti-LBGT bill.” According to the left, it is rank discrimination if “transgender people” cannot freely choose for themselves which bathroom they use, depending on their own view of their “gender identity.”

This post is characteristic of the genre. It appeared of late in my Facebook feed:

http://uproxx.com/life/angry-dad-trans-bathroom-laws/

The irony here is thick as peanut butter. The article ends with an appeal for open-mindedness and tolerance. Yet it begins with a recommendation to un-friend on Facebook anyone who disagrees with you. If the author were at all open-minded, he would at least address the stated intention of the bill, clear in its very title, instead of imputing to its framers a different, unstated motive. The arguments and concerns of the bill's backers might be misguided, but honesty demands they be addressed in some way. To avoid accusing the writer and his original source of dishonesty—and the same goes for essentially every reporter and commentator on the bill in the mainstream media, and all those who repost this stuff on Facebook and elsewhere--it is necessary to assume an extreme closed-mindedness. They do not know the arguments for the bill, they never read it, and they do not want to know.

A Thai transsexual (male to female). Not a problem.

Note that the present bill would not affect transsexuals. They have always freely used rest rooms corresponding to their anatomical, not their genetic, sex. Nobody cares; most often, nobody knows. They would continue to do so under the present North Carolina bill. You use the rest room for the sex given on your birth certificate. Like most US states, North Carolina allows you to change the sex on your birth certificate if you have had “sex reassignment surgery.” This might be a bit of a hassle, but trivial compared to the surgery. And, in the real world, a transsexual probably would not need to bother. Nobody cares, and nobody with the new bill is going to be at the restroom door demanding to see your papers. If you look like a woman, why would anyone think to challenge you in the women's room? If you look like a man, most certainly, nobody will challenge you in the men's room. Where's the problem?

The problem, contrary to almost every piece of propaganda from the left, is not with allowing transsexuals, but with allowing “transgender people,” into the women's room. The left constantly uses this phrase, “transgender” but does not seem to understand what it means. They apparently think it means the same as “transsexual.” A transsexual is someone who has altered their anatomical sex with surgery. “Transgender” is a broader term. “Transgender” follows the feminist dogma that “gender” has nothing to do with anatomy or genetics, that it is a role assigned by society. The rest is just plumbing. Therefore, anyone can feel inwardly he is “really” a woman, or she is really a man, despite either genetics or anatomy.

Do you see the problem yet? 

The Rape of Lucretia. Problem.

Allowing such “transgender people” to choose which washroom to use, therefore, based only on their own claimed opinion as they state it to you, means in practice letting every man or woman choose for themselves which washroom to use at any given time. Yes, even at any given time. According to the politically correct definition, "transgender" includes "gender fluid." If challenged on entering the ladies' room, all anyone need do is say they feel like a woman today. And then perhaps file a complaint against the unadvisedly brave interrogator for discrimination on grounds of sexual identity.

Real transgender people, if they really exist, are of no concern here. Presumably they are not going to abuse this. But pederasts, rapists, molesters, and voyeurs certainly will. They cannot simply be held on their honour. If they were honourable, they would not be pederasts, rapists, molesters, and voyeurs. In effect, allowing “transgenders” free choice means the end to washrooms segregated by sex.

One response I have gotten, more than once, on pointing this out, is that there is no need to worry, because we already have laws against rape, molestation, voyeurism, and pederasty. But by this logic, we ought also not to waste good money on well-lighted transit stops, or police patrols. There is no good reason to avoid dark alleys, or certain districts of town. After all, we already have laws against anything bad that might happen.

Who cares if we have surrendered any good chance to prevent, apprehend or convict in court?

This may be the left's Waterloo. It is not just that they have jumped the shark. They have also now thrown women under the bus. It was all very well when they could make straight white males the villains. They are a minority. A little bit larger than the Jews, but still a minority. They can be pushed around. Also sacrifice the obvious interests of women, though, and you have doubled the numbers.

It only remains to be seen how strong the herd instinct is in keeping women in line. Or how long a ganeral closed-mindedness on the left will protect them from actual thought.