Gender: A Luxury Belief

The decadence of transgerism

Those who have uttered the mantra ‘I'd rather have a trans daughter than a dead son’ would never imagine that transgender ideology could be described as a decadence or indulgence. After all, we are constantly told that there are droves of young trans people taking their own lives as a result of being denied access to puberty blockers, cross sex hormones and surgery. We are also told that transwomen are being murdered at an alarming rate. How, therefore, could fighting for the basic rights and needs of this marginalised population ever be seen as anything other than urgent?

However, working-class women, and other individuals suffering from poverty, are being forced to bear the consequences of an ideology that is utterly middle-class and decadent.

Characterised as ‘an excessive indulgence in a pleasure or luxury’, decadence is very much a Western concept. It signifies a moral and cultural decline in values. But transgender ideology is not confined to the Global North. I travel extensively to investigate stories on male violence towards women and girls in all its forms, and have encountered decadence in Pakistan, Uganda, Ecuador and Albania. But one thing connects those institutions and individuals promoting theories about ‘gender identity' trumping biological sex, and that is institutionalised wealth and educational privilege.

I was recently invited to an Ivy League university to do a lecture on the global women’s liberation movement. The LGBTQQIA+ caucus objected to my presence on the basis that I was so transphobic I would trigger suicidal ideation in transgender students and cause literal harm.

To placate the cry-babies, a teaching room was turned into a therapy hub. There were trained counsellors on site, the room was littered with soft toys, and there were even a couple of dogs and cats brought along for non-judgemental cuddling. Apparently, the walls were strewn with affirmative statements such as ‘trans women are women’ and ‘non-binary identities are valid’.

Yet these mollycoddled students forget that while they are whining about nothing, women are actually dealing with the aftermath of men’s violence towards them. For instance, they ignore the women at a large international conference in 2021, speaking to hundreds of feminists about being raped and tortured in detention centres, or having to face the man who abused them in childhood in a courtroom. Instead, transactivists are alternating between taking the knee to commemorate the trans people murdered in the UK (none) and banging on the windows of the conference shouting abuse at the women inside, as they did at a recent event for women fighting patriarchal atrocities worldwide, including the systematic execution of women in Iran.

The notion of self-declaration is state-sanctioned narcissism, because it seeks to force the rest of society, including our legal system, to recognise a person as the opposite sex. In a world where trans prisoners are demanding curling tongs, mascara and perfume in bottles, so that they continue their performance of femininity, women are demanding safe spaces from male bodied people so that they can spend one night without the fear of assault.

The problem is the colonisation of the identity of 'female'. Men who self-identify as women want to have fun with our oppression, in other words to experience it as a thrill.

For example, in his book Please Miss: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Penis, trans activist Grace Lavery wrote: “There is something about being treated like shit by men that feels like affirmation itself, like a cry of delight from the deepest cavern of my breast.” And let’s not forget this classic quote: “To be the victim of honest, undisguised sexism possesses an exhilarating vitality.” Lavery describes his penis* “as though I were laying my own miscarried foetus across my hand”.

And then there is the penchant for male violence, abuse and degradation. In their book Female, trans identified male Andrea Long Chu gives his take on the “barest essentials” of “femaleness”, which is “an open mouth, an expectant asshole, blank, blank eyes”.

Whilst feminists risk hostility, social exclusion and even violence for speaking out about the abomination of men’s violence towards women, there are those men (whilst identifying as women) that fantasise about it happening to them. Whilst we have no choice but to shape our lives in order to avoid rape and domestic abuse, some men get terribly excited at the idea that they too could experience it.

For instance, we now have trans-identified men walking around naked in the women’s changing rooms at public saunas and gyms complaining that they not being accommodated.

While in the UK and US, elite universities are forcing trans and non-binary literature on students. In Scotland, student unions at Edinburgh and St Andrews are handing out free breast binders to young women who wish to transition. But in universities where working-class kids predominate, it is highly unusual to be indoctrinated with trans-ideology.

In October 2020, a man called Kevin Price was threatened with losing his job as a porter at Cambridge University: he eventually quit before he was sacked. Price had refused to sign up to the statement, ‘Trans women are women. Trans men are men. Non-binary individuals are non-binary,’ at the local municipality where he served as a councillor.

Cambridge students claimed to feel “alienated and unsafe” in their college because this working-class man refused to sign up to their indulgent beliefs. There is, in my view, something unpleasant about a group of the most elite students threatening the livelihood of a man employed to serve them because he refuses to adopt their language and endorse their opinions.

In the US, students at $80,000 a year ultra-liberal University Oberlin, Ohio, made a serious complaint that a ‘cisgendered man’ was contracted to fit radiators in a dorm described as a 'safe space for women and transgender students'.

One student, a man who identified as ‘non-binary, complained that he felt “mildly violated” at the thought of a man being in his room to do maintenance work. The student added that he felt “angry, scared and confused” about the man’s presence.

Elsewhere, Pink News (PN), which describes itself as an ‘LGBTQ+’ media platform, seems more concerned with pronouns that women being at risk from serious sex offenders. Former PN journalist Ryan Butcher said he found it 'repugnant' to ‘dead name’ the double rapist Adam Graham. Butcher prefers to use ‘she/her’ and the name Isla Bryson to describe Graham, who committed both rapes as a man, was arrested as a man and appeared at early court hearings as a man, and under his birth name. When it became clear he would be sentenced to prison, Graham claimed to be a transwoman and asked to be placed in a women’s prison. The Scottish Prison Service agreed that it was appropriate to send a sex offender to reside amongst some of the most vulnerable women in society.

In an NHS waiting room, you will see a woman sitting with breast cancer, waiting to hear how long it will be before she will be given an appointment for life-saving surgery. At the same time, ‘transwomen’ call breast augmentation surgery ‘healthcare’ which many demand on the National Health Service, as well as thousands of crowdfunders to raise money to undergo double mastectomies for trans-identifying girls and young women.

The rich can afford to indulge themselves in more than just champagne, caviar and fast cars. The rise identity politics, as well as the constant complaints of ‘hurt feelings’ and ‘psychological damage’, beggars belief when we look at the resilience of women who have endured the worst kind of violence and near death experiences.

‘Luxury beliefs’ are the latest status symbol for Americans. Whereas in the past, the upper-classes in the United States would display their social status with luxury goods, today they do so with gender woo.