The feminist author of The Abolition of Sex has become the ultimate example of a new propaganda phenomenon, which denounces leftists as right-wing when they say unpopular things
Such a clear statement, as usual, of this phenomenon: "in which leftist or independent critics of mainstream fixations — from Russiagate to the campaign of Joe Biden to war in Ukraine — are reclassified as right-wingers and Trump supporters." I am one of those critics, around Covid policy and other things. People were so sure I was a right-wing Trump supporter that I almost believed it myself. Maybe I'd drifted rightward? Nope. I'm every bit the leftist I've always been. It's more like those who brand themselves as leftists are that no longer. Well, maybe they are if you understand "left" as a mere political grouping and identity, devoid of reference to anything but itself. That would be the post-modern view, wouldn't it. Anyway, thank you Matt for bringing attention to this.
I don't get it. Why would the left adopt this ideology so fervently. I have four daughters and of course I want them to have an equal chance for success as any man, but they are distinctly girls. They happen to identify as being girls as well. The idea that a man dressed as woman can expose himself in a spa or bathroom is ludicrous or a biological man can compete against them in sports requiring size and strength is insane. It's not fair, safe or progressive. My only explanation is that the left is not really the left, but an embodiment of a grander project to control all natural elements of being a human being. I think its this control that drives this ideology. Its like a modern tower of babble. They want to control all aspects of life from biological sex to disease. A sea of experts/technocrats who make up all laws and rules. Little demigods running your everyday life. Brave New World? Any other explanations? I am all ears.
As long as the rabid lefties keep excommunicating any of their own who diverge even slightly from the orthodoxy, their ranks will continue to shrink.
That the Right is willing to have reasoned conversations with not only its own dissenters, but with folks they passionately disagree with, speaks pretty clearly to where the center of intellectual discourse is these days.
Interviews like this are the reason I subscribe to TK News and am interested in most of your work Matt. Thanks for taking journalism seriously and tackling tough topics in a clear, deliberate and balanced way. I appreciate your work.
Matt, I can't tell you how surprised and grateful I am that you have given this brave and brilliant woman the wider platform that she deserves, and that we need. Some people may know Kara Dansky and her cohorts from the Women's Liberation Front (WoLF) if they watch Fox News, but most do not.
The sad truth is that today, so-called feminists and liberals, and liberal media, have decided to throw women under the bus in order to display their progressive credentials with respect to the trans issue. If, in the process, they must appear to agree with ideological rubbish that everyone knows is false -- i.e., that there's no such thing as biological sex, and therefore biological women do not require separate safe spaces in prisons or a level playing in athletics -- then so be it.
I do what I can to support Dansky's and WoLF's work financially (those who agree, please help), as well as responding to calls for signatures and comments whenever a bill expanding trans rights at the expense of women is up for a vote in state and federal legislatures. Some of the Red states have passed bills preventing biological males from competing against females in sports at the high school level. But on the whole, particularly in the Blue states, the men-in-women's-sports-and-prisons juggernaut continues unabated, abetted by the ACLU.
How Dansky gets a good night's sleep I do not know, but she is indefatigable. As you demonstrate here, she fully understands the nuances and frustrations of being able to speak only to conservatives who help women with one hand and undermine them with the other. Still, she can only go where she's been invited. I disagree with Tucker Carlson on numerous issues, but he is very sympathetic when he interviews Dansky. Given the size of his platform, that means a lot, and I'm grateful to him for it.
Now you, Matt, have added your influence and objective reasoning powers to the conversation. Maybe you already know this, but in case you don't, let me say how groundbreaking and significant this interview is. You've broken the Left/Democratic/Progressive's shameful wall of silence. Let them call you whatever name they like...you've done a good and important thing here today.
Thank you, Matt, for presenting this interview. The iron curtain between progressives, which all my life I considered myself, and the rest of humanity, when it comes to this issue, is starting to come down. The "trans women are women" campaign has probably been the most successful lobbying campaign in modern history, done almost entirely behind the scenes and with no public discussion. It's outrageous and will ultimately crush the left in its absurdity, along with a few other woke campaigns that have been imposed on us by our academic betters and now our institutions.
The biggest scandal in all of this is what's being done to this generation of children, starting in Kindergarten. So-called affirmation therapy, which, once started, almost always leads to lifelong hormone consumption and increasingly surgery, is literally being pushed on gender nonconforming children by their teachers and doctors. Most kids who don't start on puberty blockers, and talk through their anxieties, end up being gay, though a small number will persist as trans. In practice this means that most of these kids are experiencing conversion therapy, that is, from gay to trans, and anyone who questions this medicalization can be subject to criminal prosecution, as has happened in BC where a father was fined and jailed for not agreeing to support the sex change of his daughter.
Although I certainly believe there are strong reasons related to politics, social contagions, selfish hijacking of once legitimate causes, and just plain grift... I think one thing that doesn't get talked about enough is the RIDICULOUS amount of money big pharma makes from treating (not curing) transsexuals. Expensive surgeries, hormone treatments for life... puberty blockers, for example, are an off label prescription of Lupron.
And if they die from brittle bones or suicide or other side effects of the treatments, pharma doesn't care. These are the same dickheads who knowingly caused the opiate crisis.
I'm always stumped when leftists are amazed that authoritarianism can come from the left. Leftist authoritarianism has been, far and away, the most successful brand of authoritarianism of last century. Are they so blind to anything outside their own country?
Thanks for this. There is no human good idea that cannot be ruined by taking it too far. That is the situation we are in today with "liberalism." By pushing what liberalism actually represents to the right of center all while creating wilder and wilder liberal rhetoric around certain fringe issues, we've convinced most of America that liberalism is now an extreme left wing ideology, when nothing could be further from the truth. All of this is to create a narrative that there is a substantive difference between Republicans and Democrats in the US, when there really is not enough difference to spit through. Both parties are right wing authoritarian corporate-captured groups who only differ in what they want to control about you. Both parties claim the moral high ground. Meanwhile the REAL left in the US is out here saying "hey, could we please respect each other and have some civil liberties and truth, please"?
Kara nails what I've been struggling to define for a long time: gender isn't about sex, it's about enforcing old stereotypes. Meaning, trans folks are screaming for the right to label themselves with the very stereotypes we've been fighting years to eliminate. Our society finally accepts that boys can play with dolls and pour tea and girls can hunt moose and throw a ball without the world "going to hell in a hand basket."
Bugs the shit out of me, seeing all that hard work at stereotype-busting going down the drain.
"It turns out that there is actually an advantage to doing that, which is that even though it’s my party, the Democratic Party, that is driving the rush to abolish sex in law and society, my view is that Republicans are not doing enough to stand up to it."
That's the logic I would expect from a member of the current Democratic Party. Still talking down to/blaming Republicans for the bizarre totalitarianism of the Democrats. I have a hard time taking this author seriously.
"...approximately zero Democrats are going to be persuaded by a Daily Wire production featuring a Christian conservative traditionalist." No, I disagree. Steven Crowder and Matt Welsh are making larger impacts within liberal circles than people know. In fact, I would say they are going to make further inroads than radical feminists. In Boston half the population is ultra progressive but half the population is filled with normal folks, and they are looking at the kids at Harvard and scratching their freaking heads. Considering the recent implosion at the Washington Post (Lorenz, Sonmez), MSM continues to lose credibility. As a parent, messing with kids is a hill I will die on. You cannot create tolerance on the cheap, which is what pronouns are all about.
As a gay man with skeptical views towards the sincerity of the exploding range of gender and non-binary and even trans identities, I appreciated reading this interview and particularly the following clarification:
"... Sexual orientation is grounded in the material reality of sex. Straight people are attracted to the opposite sex. Gay people are attracted to the same sex. Bisexual people are attracted to people of either sex. That’s all grounded in attraction to others....This whole identity thing has to do with one’s own feeling about one’s self. It has nothing to do with sexuality. The inclusion of T in the acronym LGB was an ingenious political strategy, because it persuaded Americans across the political spectrum to think that there is a coherent category of people called transgender for whom sex is irrelevant."
The parallel between a gay or lesbian person and trans would be if a gay man "identified" as a straight man and decided to live life as one, which would have most gay activists horrified. The irony is clear. At the same time I also don't want to be unkind - I wouldn't be unkind towards a gay man who choses to live within marriage with a woman and presents himself as straight. But one does need to be realistic at the same time. The weaponization of language and pronouns has become an imposition rather than a kindness, and the awkwardness over sports is a genuine problem that has to be addressed. And we need to have a frank and open discussion surrounding so much of transgenders and fluid gender identities, especially the sincerity of them and the strong overlap with various other mental conditions or autistic or bipolar backgrounds that has you wondering why society should restructure and redefine itself so radically just to be "kind." It has become unhealthy, as we with this severe pressures from LGBT+ activists.
The Neocon/Christian Conservative types destroyed the Republican brand during the Bush administrations. The Neolib/Critical Theory Marxists are now doing the same to the Democrat Party. The Neocons were striving for American hegemony, the Neolibs are striving for American destruction. I've had enough of both. For all their faults, the current conservative populist movement is the only faction fighting for American economic success. They have my vote, for the moment
Such a clear statement, as usual, of this phenomenon: "in which leftist or independent critics of mainstream fixations — from Russiagate to the campaign of Joe Biden to war in Ukraine — are reclassified as right-wingers and Trump supporters." I am one of those critics, around Covid policy and other things. People were so sure I was a right-wing Trump supporter that I almost believed it myself. Maybe I'd drifted rightward? Nope. I'm every bit the leftist I've always been. It's more like those who brand themselves as leftists are that no longer. Well, maybe they are if you understand "left" as a mere political grouping and identity, devoid of reference to anything but itself. That would be the post-modern view, wouldn't it. Anyway, thank you Matt for bringing attention to this.
I don't get it. Why would the left adopt this ideology so fervently. I have four daughters and of course I want them to have an equal chance for success as any man, but they are distinctly girls. They happen to identify as being girls as well. The idea that a man dressed as woman can expose himself in a spa or bathroom is ludicrous or a biological man can compete against them in sports requiring size and strength is insane. It's not fair, safe or progressive. My only explanation is that the left is not really the left, but an embodiment of a grander project to control all natural elements of being a human being. I think its this control that drives this ideology. Its like a modern tower of babble. They want to control all aspects of life from biological sex to disease. A sea of experts/technocrats who make up all laws and rules. Little demigods running your everyday life. Brave New World? Any other explanations? I am all ears.
Why are men dressed as, and imitating, women not condemned with the same fervor as white men in blackface?
As long as the rabid lefties keep excommunicating any of their own who diverge even slightly from the orthodoxy, their ranks will continue to shrink.
That the Right is willing to have reasoned conversations with not only its own dissenters, but with folks they passionately disagree with, speaks pretty clearly to where the center of intellectual discourse is these days.
Interviews like this are the reason I subscribe to TK News and am interested in most of your work Matt. Thanks for taking journalism seriously and tackling tough topics in a clear, deliberate and balanced way. I appreciate your work.
Matt, I can't tell you how surprised and grateful I am that you have given this brave and brilliant woman the wider platform that she deserves, and that we need. Some people may know Kara Dansky and her cohorts from the Women's Liberation Front (WoLF) if they watch Fox News, but most do not.
The sad truth is that today, so-called feminists and liberals, and liberal media, have decided to throw women under the bus in order to display their progressive credentials with respect to the trans issue. If, in the process, they must appear to agree with ideological rubbish that everyone knows is false -- i.e., that there's no such thing as biological sex, and therefore biological women do not require separate safe spaces in prisons or a level playing in athletics -- then so be it.
I do what I can to support Dansky's and WoLF's work financially (those who agree, please help), as well as responding to calls for signatures and comments whenever a bill expanding trans rights at the expense of women is up for a vote in state and federal legislatures. Some of the Red states have passed bills preventing biological males from competing against females in sports at the high school level. But on the whole, particularly in the Blue states, the men-in-women's-sports-and-prisons juggernaut continues unabated, abetted by the ACLU.
How Dansky gets a good night's sleep I do not know, but she is indefatigable. As you demonstrate here, she fully understands the nuances and frustrations of being able to speak only to conservatives who help women with one hand and undermine them with the other. Still, she can only go where she's been invited. I disagree with Tucker Carlson on numerous issues, but he is very sympathetic when he interviews Dansky. Given the size of his platform, that means a lot, and I'm grateful to him for it.
Now you, Matt, have added your influence and objective reasoning powers to the conversation. Maybe you already know this, but in case you don't, let me say how groundbreaking and significant this interview is. You've broken the Left/Democratic/Progressive's shameful wall of silence. Let them call you whatever name they like...you've done a good and important thing here today.
Thank you very very much.
Thank you, Matt, for presenting this interview. The iron curtain between progressives, which all my life I considered myself, and the rest of humanity, when it comes to this issue, is starting to come down. The "trans women are women" campaign has probably been the most successful lobbying campaign in modern history, done almost entirely behind the scenes and with no public discussion. It's outrageous and will ultimately crush the left in its absurdity, along with a few other woke campaigns that have been imposed on us by our academic betters and now our institutions.
The biggest scandal in all of this is what's being done to this generation of children, starting in Kindergarten. So-called affirmation therapy, which, once started, almost always leads to lifelong hormone consumption and increasingly surgery, is literally being pushed on gender nonconforming children by their teachers and doctors. Most kids who don't start on puberty blockers, and talk through their anxieties, end up being gay, though a small number will persist as trans. In practice this means that most of these kids are experiencing conversion therapy, that is, from gay to trans, and anyone who questions this medicalization can be subject to criminal prosecution, as has happened in BC where a father was fined and jailed for not agreeing to support the sex change of his daughter.
Although I certainly believe there are strong reasons related to politics, social contagions, selfish hijacking of once legitimate causes, and just plain grift... I think one thing that doesn't get talked about enough is the RIDICULOUS amount of money big pharma makes from treating (not curing) transsexuals. Expensive surgeries, hormone treatments for life... puberty blockers, for example, are an off label prescription of Lupron.
And if they die from brittle bones or suicide or other side effects of the treatments, pharma doesn't care. These are the same dickheads who knowingly caused the opiate crisis.
Follow the money.
I'm always stumped when leftists are amazed that authoritarianism can come from the left. Leftist authoritarianism has been, far and away, the most successful brand of authoritarianism of last century. Are they so blind to anything outside their own country?
Thanks for this. There is no human good idea that cannot be ruined by taking it too far. That is the situation we are in today with "liberalism." By pushing what liberalism actually represents to the right of center all while creating wilder and wilder liberal rhetoric around certain fringe issues, we've convinced most of America that liberalism is now an extreme left wing ideology, when nothing could be further from the truth. All of this is to create a narrative that there is a substantive difference between Republicans and Democrats in the US, when there really is not enough difference to spit through. Both parties are right wing authoritarian corporate-captured groups who only differ in what they want to control about you. Both parties claim the moral high ground. Meanwhile the REAL left in the US is out here saying "hey, could we please respect each other and have some civil liberties and truth, please"?
“we did not expect authoritarianism from the left.”
Says it all really.
Kara nails what I've been struggling to define for a long time: gender isn't about sex, it's about enforcing old stereotypes. Meaning, trans folks are screaming for the right to label themselves with the very stereotypes we've been fighting years to eliminate. Our society finally accepts that boys can play with dolls and pour tea and girls can hunt moose and throw a ball without the world "going to hell in a hand basket."
Bugs the shit out of me, seeing all that hard work at stereotype-busting going down the drain.
"It turns out that there is actually an advantage to doing that, which is that even though it’s my party, the Democratic Party, that is driving the rush to abolish sex in law and society, my view is that Republicans are not doing enough to stand up to it."
That's the logic I would expect from a member of the current Democratic Party. Still talking down to/blaming Republicans for the bizarre totalitarianism of the Democrats. I have a hard time taking this author seriously.
"...approximately zero Democrats are going to be persuaded by a Daily Wire production featuring a Christian conservative traditionalist." No, I disagree. Steven Crowder and Matt Welsh are making larger impacts within liberal circles than people know. In fact, I would say they are going to make further inroads than radical feminists. In Boston half the population is ultra progressive but half the population is filled with normal folks, and they are looking at the kids at Harvard and scratching their freaking heads. Considering the recent implosion at the Washington Post (Lorenz, Sonmez), MSM continues to lose credibility. As a parent, messing with kids is a hill I will die on. You cannot create tolerance on the cheap, which is what pronouns are all about.
As a gay man with skeptical views towards the sincerity of the exploding range of gender and non-binary and even trans identities, I appreciated reading this interview and particularly the following clarification:
"... Sexual orientation is grounded in the material reality of sex. Straight people are attracted to the opposite sex. Gay people are attracted to the same sex. Bisexual people are attracted to people of either sex. That’s all grounded in attraction to others....This whole identity thing has to do with one’s own feeling about one’s self. It has nothing to do with sexuality. The inclusion of T in the acronym LGB was an ingenious political strategy, because it persuaded Americans across the political spectrum to think that there is a coherent category of people called transgender for whom sex is irrelevant."
The parallel between a gay or lesbian person and trans would be if a gay man "identified" as a straight man and decided to live life as one, which would have most gay activists horrified. The irony is clear. At the same time I also don't want to be unkind - I wouldn't be unkind towards a gay man who choses to live within marriage with a woman and presents himself as straight. But one does need to be realistic at the same time. The weaponization of language and pronouns has become an imposition rather than a kindness, and the awkwardness over sports is a genuine problem that has to be addressed. And we need to have a frank and open discussion surrounding so much of transgenders and fluid gender identities, especially the sincerity of them and the strong overlap with various other mental conditions or autistic or bipolar backgrounds that has you wondering why society should restructure and redefine itself so radically just to be "kind." It has become unhealthy, as we with this severe pressures from LGBT+ activists.
The Neocon/Christian Conservative types destroyed the Republican brand during the Bush administrations. The Neolib/Critical Theory Marxists are now doing the same to the Democrat Party. The Neocons were striving for American hegemony, the Neolibs are striving for American destruction. I've had enough of both. For all their faults, the current conservative populist movement is the only faction fighting for American economic success. They have my vote, for the moment