Saturday, August 12, 2017

Chaos is a Ladder in the Orwellianization of Sex and Gender

Look no further than the Mount Everest, peak-levels of cringe surrounding this issue in popular media and so-called science fiction and you'll see why this is increasingly becoming something worth addressing and talking about. Yes, it's lamentable that much of this has to be reiterated and more rigorously argued for, but here we are. Sex, gender, pronouns -- it's all being ripped apart and mashed together over social and popular media, with the (so-called) progressive, postmodern, CTRL-Left (the flipside of the collectivist, identitarian coin that also includes the ALT-Right) and their Social Justice Warriors increasingly latching on and doubling down, pushing for individual and institutional thought and speech control. Critical theory is their muse, which in a broad sense claims that all knowledge is historical and biased, that any claims to objective knowledge are illusory, and that it should all be maximally destabilized through various strategies and tactics. In arbitrary, subjectivist ideology, the ends justifies the means, as well -- this means that minimizing, obscuring or concealing any alleged truth up to engaging outright lies is a small price to pay to achieve a greater goal.

This is not to say that everyone who has been convinced of this mode of thought and speech is necessarily an underhanded activist (although it's relatively easy to spot the activist types). However, those who aren't are being tooled into useful idiots in doing so, and it's important to be equipped with the knowledge and integrity to avoid becoming an intellectual casualty of this ideology.

Appreciating where there are some clear, settled, and calm waters of knowledge, understanding, and communication so society can turn its focus to more pressing and important issues, it is the CTRL-Left's modus operandi to come along, dump a bunch of dirt and shit into it all, kick it up, and rub our faces in it. We might ask why they do this -- why this is their M.O. -- but to me, it seems pretty clear. Compared to trying to enact radical, social change in the face of established norms and accepted realities, it's much easier to do it amidst chaos and distraction -- especially if you can trip people up on what they think they know, their ability to understand the world around them, and how they're able to communicate.

This strikes at the heart of why the Orwellian deconstruction of knowledge and language is so effective. In the words of the infamous Lord Petyr 'Littlefinger' Baelish from Game of Thrones, "Chaos... is a ladder."

Part I: 'Sex' as an Empirical Construct and Exceptions that Prove the Rule
Part II: 'Gender' as a Social Construct and its Relative 'Elasticity'
Part III: Where Social Justice Ideologues go off the Rails on Gender
Part IV: The Increasingly Absurd Application of Transgender Ideology
Part VII: In Conclusion


Part I: 'Sex' as an Empirical Construct and Exceptions that Prove the Rule

In the human species, sex is binary, permanent, and unchanging. This is readily, empirically observable -- male or female, man or woman, him or her, he or she -- all of these are both defined and conceptualized specifically according to an objective biological ‘sex’, identical across all times and cultures of human history. This isn't even referring to the superficial perceptions of someone's sex based on outward appearance or genitalia, this is in regards to the empirical, objective reality of an individual's DNA as genetically derived -- XX for female or XY for male.



"♪♫ 46 and 2, ahead of me. ♪♫"

When the Social Justice Warrior is confronted with the argument from the empirically observable, genetic reality surrounding sex, he will often want to point out either the development of a fetus as 'female by default' or the less than 0.01% of individuals with more complicated allosomal (referencing the sex chromosomes) profiles.

While easily dispatched, the 'female default' fetal development claim is, unfortunately, far too often one we still hear and have to put up with. The claim is partly that because a penis on an XY fetus doesn't form until about the 9th week, then that means an XY fetus prior to that time is a 'female' with a 'vagina' and 'ovaries', with the alleged implication being that XX or XY chromosomes must then not necessarily be what determine sex, and that sex is more 'biologically fluid' than is being acknowledged. Also, a quick Google search of 'female as default sex' yields quite a bit of content of people continuing to propagate this error based on decades old and very limited research in the field of fetal sex differentiation. The reality is that prior to the 9th week where sexual differentiation actually takes place, there are neither 'female sex organs' nor 'male sex organs' -- merely as-of-yet undeveloped, non-functional 'buds' that will eventually form according to allosomal profiles, ceteris paribus.

In addition, this whole 'female is the default sex' claim was completely debunked, as expressed by a Stanford paper on The Genetics of Sex Determination. In a nutshell,

Research on sex determination (the differentiation of the embryonic bipotential gonad into a testis or an ovary) traditionally focused on testis development. Andrew Sinclair’s 1990 Nature paper famously identified a Y-chromosome gene as the Sex-Determining Region Y (SRY). Female sexual development, by contrast, was thought to proceed as a "default" in the absence of Sry. In the case of sex determination, "default" became the prevailing concept for female pathways—i.e., an ovary results in the absence of other action. The active processes controlling ovarian development remained a blind spot. The notion of a "passive" female fit with current scientific theories and gender assumptions in the broader society. 
Around 2010, questioning the notion of "default" led to the discovery of a cohort of genes required for ovarian function. Gender analysis led to three innovations in this field: 
  1. Recognition of ovarian determination as an active process. These investigations have also enhanced knowledge about testis development, and how the ovarian and testicular pathways interact (see chart).
  2. Discovery of ongoing ovarian and testis maintenance. Research into the ovarian pathway revealed that the transcriptional regulator FOXL2 must be expressed in adult ovarian follicles to prevent "transdifferentiation of an adult ovary to a testis." Subsequently, researchers found that the transcription factor DMRT1 is needed to prevent reprogramming of testicular Sertoli cells into ovarian granulosa cells.
  3. New language to describe gonadal differentiation. Researchers have dismissed the concept of "default" and emphasize that, while female and male developmental pathways are divergent, the construction of an ovary (like the construction of a testis or any other organ) is an active process. Each pathway requires complex cascades of gene products in proper dosages and at precise times. [1]

Further, in fewer than 0.00001% of XX and XY fetuses, the sex organs may fail to develop, leading always to infertility and what are called 'streak gonads' (non-functional, usually cancerous, fibrous tissue) as well as a failure of secondary sex characteristics to develop during puberty. This is called gonadal dysgenesis and, depending on the form, can include complications such as deafness, eye disorders, and cancer (at the site of the streak gonads during infancy).

The counter-argument regarding more complicated allosomal profiles is far more interesting and more important. Notable examples include combinations such as XXXXY, XXXY, XXYY, XX/XY Chimerism, XXY (Klinefelter Syndrome), XXX (Triple-X Syndrome), XYY, XX Male (de la Chapelle Syndrome), X (Turner Syndrome), and more. These are all extremely rare, and apart from one or two non-intersex profiles, they're all very unfortunate disorders that have complications ranging from sterility, to deafness, to eye disorders, to deformalities, to cognitive or physical developmental disorders, and in many cases shorter to much shorter lifespans and cancer. Most often, you'll find a combination of these unfortunate complications.

While still extremely rare, other intersex individuals often referenced are those historically known as true hermaphrodites, and more clinically referred to these days as having ovotesticular disorder of sex development. While their external genitalia are often ambiguous and they usually grow up sterile, these individuals typically have far less severe complications than the previously mentioned syndromes and can usually live normal lives. 

The 3 Primary Karyotypes for True Hermaphroditism are XX with genetic defects (55-70% of cases), XX/XY (20-30% of cases) & XY (5-15% of cases) with the remainder being a variety of other Chromosomal abnormalities and Mosaicisms.[2]

It's important to bring up true hermaphroditism, since at first glance, this seems to possibly propose a problem for the idea of the empiricism of binary, clear-cut sexes. However, reality still reaffirms this. In the cases where true hermaphroditism isn't expressed through one of the previously mentioned severe syndromes, most are simply cases of the XX/XY chimerism -- being that what was initially to be separate twins actually ended up with one XX or XY twin absorbing the opposite sex twin at a very early stage of development. Where there would have been two clear-cut opposite-sexed individuals -- an extremely rare, developmental fluke took place, instead. 

In consideration of all of this, how does it follow, then, that 'more than two sexes actually exist', or that this justifies genetically healthy and normal folks to claim that sex isn't based on one's chromosomes? If over 99.99% of individuals follow the standard genetic profile of sex as 'male' or 'female', and the further an individual unfortunately genetically drifts away from the standard blueprint of a healthy, fully functional individual brings more and increasingly severe complications, then it would actually follow that our conclusion should be the exact opposite. Simply put -- there are two sexes, and the more genetically intersex an individual is, the worse off he or she will be.

Ultimately, the subject of one's sex is a matter of an empirical, binary reality for 99.99% of all individuals born -- male or female. As for the remaining 0.01% of genuinely intersex individuals, it makes sense to refer to them as intersex, but not because there is a 'third sex', or no sexes, or some other arbitrary number of sexes other than 'two', but because there are two sexes. They are the extremely rare exception that proves the rule. If these weren't complications, and additional sexes were necessary or even just possible in the sexual reproduction of the human species, then intersex could be considered an additional 'sex'. Further, it's a particularly strange line of reasoning to fall on the argument of pointing out these intersex individuals and those with genetic complications as some justification for transgendered individuals to be able to claim to be the opposite sex, when they were, in fact, born genetically healthy and normal.


Part II: 'Gender' as a Social Construct and its Relative 'Elasticity'

Gender, on the other hand, is a subjective, social construct, albeit still based on a bimodal distribution of ‘masculinity’ vs ‘femininity’. It's a social construct because while expressions of gender are typically tied closely to the sexes across cultures, the cultures themselves express masculinity and femininity in sometimes wildly different ways. It's a bimodal distribution because while an individual would be on the spectrum of more or less masculine or feminine expression, there would be a peak concentration around a typical degree of masculine expression amongst the general populace, and a separate peak concentration around a typical degree of feminine expression amongst the general populace. In the middle of these peaks you'd have a very, very deep trough with a small connecting point representing essentially the androgynous, alienesque Mechanical Animals (his, ahem, best album, obviously) incarnation of Marilyn Manson, or Ziggy Stardust-esque androgyny.


You were a strange bird, indeed, David Bowie.


On either opposite end of the two peaks, there would be a trailing off of the more hyper-masculine and hyper-feminine expressions. Think, maybe, 'Conan the Barbarian' on one extreme end and Valeria 'The Human Barbie' Lukyanova on the other. Take note, these are meant to be caricatured examples to help illustrate the point of the genpop falloff towards either extreme.


So, basically... beefcake and cheesecake, then.


Gender norms don't always sit so neatly for everyone with their corresponding sex, though. Some socially constructed gender norms are more 'flexible' than others. For example, the color pink being considered a 'feminine' color has no empirical basis according to sex, and this is further buttressed by the fact that pink was actually considered a slightly masculine color at least in the 1800s and pre-WW2 1900s, having been considered a shade of the 'warlike' red...

In 19th century England, pink ribbons or decorations were often worn by young boys; boys were simply considered small men, and while men in England wore red uniforms, boys wore pink. In fact the clothing for children in the 19th century was almost always white, since, before the invention of chemical dyes, clothing of any color would quickly fade when washed in boiling water. Queen Victoria was painted in 1850 with her seventh child and third son, Prince Arthur, who wore white and pink. [3]
... 
The transition to pink as a sexually differentiating color for girls occurred gradually, through the selective process of the marketplace, in the 1930s and 40s. In the 1920s, some groups had been describing pink as a masculine color, an equivalent of the red that was considered to be for men, but lighter for boys. But stores nonetheless found that people were increasingly choosing to buy pink for girls, and blue for boys, until this became an accepted norm in the 1940s. [4]

Fashion and gender norms are like socks amidst the winds of change. We conform with the gender norms society has mostly set out for colors like 'pink' and 'blue', for example, not because we have to or because we seek out and accept 'oppression' -- but because we signal, seek out and want to be accepted by like-minded people with at least some similar values. As such, we conform accordingly through conscious and/or subconscious adoption. When it comes to clothes, some styles and types of clothes are more temporally and universally feminine than masculine -- a less gender elastic example could be a highly frilly ballerina tutu or other clothes that more emphasize certain aspects of the female form. While still a social construct, it is far less flexible and far more closely tied to evolutionary biological realities than others, and so we are typically more understandably repulsed and revolted (counter-culturalists be damned) when we see men -- and in particular, especially masculine-featured men -- dressing in women's clothes.

Regarding women, while a female can dress 'tomboyish', it doesn't cause much of a negative reaction for the vast majority of the general population. Tomboys also typically use more feminine-fitting clothes even though they're dressing in more boyish styles. Then you have 'the butch' style that some lesbians more often dress, express and style themselves in (including haircut, et cetera), and while it's still rarely or at least less of an eye sore compared to men in women's clothing, it can still cause a bit of an, "ehhhhh,' feeling. Why this is so, compared to the more feminine-fit but masculine-styled 'tomboy look', is probably related to the fact that it's female bodies now wearing much more masculine-fitting clothes. For example, regarding the style of pants, the way the crotch and hips don't quite look right, the fit on the body type looks all wrong, the more box-like fitting shirts, and so on and so forth.

So whether we're talking masculine or feminine, in whatever culture, and whichever sex it's associated with -- when someone who is clearly a certain sex tries to express themselves completely as the opposite gender, something happens in our lizard-brain. What happens is probably a kind of biological 'signal-confusion' when increasingly masculine-featured men wearing women's clothes or feminine-featured women wear men's clothes -- and this could be what is inducing the 'alarm bells' that go off in our brains as a kind of immediate evolutionary defense mechanism. Further, evolution is not an equal-opportunity employer -- the reason we have even more revulsion towards men and less towards women expressing opposite gender norms is probably related to biology, as well. In the lizard-brain context of evolutionary survival, a woman who acts and looks like a man can still provide the major things that a woman needs to provide -- a womb. Wombs are highly valuable, and we can much more tolerate not so good ones -- but dicks are cheap. You can afford to discard all but the most alpha. Similarly, what would be an acceptable flaw in a Mercedes will make you walk away from a Hyundai.

This spills over into gender roles in what initially seems counter-intuitive, but when we think of it in a more evolutionary biological context, it maintains internal consistency very well. As an example, when the vast majority of both men and women see physically attractive women doing, say, carpentry, or construction, or climbing (and other extreme activities), or handling a rifle or being a complete and total badass in an intense action movie -- all generally considered to be much more masculine activities -- they're seen as that much more attractive and desirable. Why is that? It seems, again from the lizard-brain context of evolutionary survival, that such a woman already has the 'being a desirable woman thing' down, and on top of that, is extremely capable in effectively accomplishing usually male-dominated activities, as well. Her genes, values, ability, independence, intelligence, and sheer will make her essentially the lizard-brain zenith of evolutionary progress and care-taking.


    

    
 I'm pretty sure my lizard-brain just went into complete and total overdrive.


Considering all of this, women don't so easily evoke an 'eye sore' or instigate revulsion when adopting many typically male gender norms -- on the contrary, it seems we could make the argument that females generally have a lot more 'gender elasticity' than their male counterparts. Males can get away with far less of using women's clothes and fulfilling typically feminine gender norms without inspiring revulsion and the whole, "It's like a train wreck, you can't look away," feeling. Of course, exceptions to this natural reaction do exist -- but they seem to be even far more extraordinary exceptions on the male side of the transgender expression equation.

This is not all to say that current gender norms as a social construct should be considered 'settled' and chiseled into the stone of western values, like how property rights as a social construct are increasingly, and thankfully, chiseled. After all, we wouldn't have such fine specimens and such expression of these women without the evolution of these norms. A modern, healthy gender social construct will continue to morph and change but mostly in a voluntary and amicable way as it makes sense for the individuals who participate in it, and not in the aggressive, arrogant way the ideological subculture in question is trying to push into the mainstream. Vulgar (also known as 'third-wave'), as opposed to classical ('first' and 'second wave') feminist heads explode at such talk, but there isn't some big underlying conspiracy against women -- parts of the social construct around women are rational and in place for reasons that make sense. We can at least all agree that generally speaking, women are less physically strong than their male counterparts. While this has become less relevant in modern, western civilization -- likely due to such radically increased standards of living compared to the vast majority of human existence -- society has built and still supports many customary and social expectations around that premise establishing additional protections for them. Of course, the undeniable fact that men are generally taller and physically stronger than women doesn't discount exceptions of shorter and/or physically weaker men and taller and/or physically stronger women.


Part III: Where Social Justice Ideologues go off the Rails on Gender

Evolutionary biology doesn't apply only from the neck down, however. The fact that the most disparate gender norms occur in even the most egalitarian societies (such as the commonly referenced Vatinai of Papua, New Guinea) is not a mere coincidence. The recent #GoogleMemo, a wrongthink document virally propagated within Google by software engineer James Damore, is aptly filled with studies, charts, and citations from peer-reviewed, scientific sources, and does a far better job than I could do, here, to effectively prove this point.

Let it be known that James Damore is an extraordinarily intelligent, very well-educated individual who has a Master's degree in Systems Biology from Harvard and pursued a Ph. D from there, as well -- so we can't dismiss his arguments and person as easily as many of these ideologues would fallaciously like. As shown, the science is simply not on the side of the vulgar feminists, and engaging in as many shameful and dishonest misrepresentations of the #GoogleMemo situation as the media and these ideologues have, doesn't change that. Damore's memo rightly doesn't claim that 'women are inherently mentally or emotionally incapable' of working effectively in the tech industry (again, feel free to actually read the 10-page document in its entirety) -- on the contrary, he notes that natural differences simply explain the disparity of their presence compared to men, and that moving away from a merit-based system on ideological grounds is counter-productive. Google claims that their workplace is a so-called open forum, but it turns out that the culture at Google at all levels actually works to silence genuine discussion of these and other issues. Noam Chomsky in his book The Common Good wisely states,

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum....”

This is the hypocritical issue at Google as well as in the greater point regarding the cultural thought and speech control being made in this post. Of course, Google has every right to fire whoever it wants for any reason they like, but it's all pretense. James Damore penned an op-ed on the Wall Street Journal on why he was fired by Google, and for non-subscribers, you can read it here. You can also read his insightful Reddit AMA, here.

So as it turns out, men are 'from Mars', and women are 'from Venus'. Generally speaking, they think differently and emphasize different priorities, which accounts for much of the disparities that vulgar feminists incessantly harp on. The so-called gender wage gap is explained away, similarly. Of course, it should also go without saying that noting that the sexes are different in these ways does not imply that one is superior to the other -- but the dishonesty of these ideologues leaves us with constantly having to reiterate this point, regardless.

Yet, as part of the modus operandi of Social Justice Warriors, they can always be counted on to choose ideology over science, despite wanting to claim and especially be perceived as 'scientifically-minded'. The fact is, they are only in favor of science when it suits them, and it should always be called into question when they claim to be in favor of or on the side of 'science', when their priorities are often diametrically opposed to that. In a piece on Slate filled to the brim with hypocrisy, this is illustrated by the author's vague admission on where their priorities (on science vs Social Justice ideology) really lie, while trying to shield the reality of these priorities behind a very narrow and extreme example based on claims of 'racial IQs'. When I discussed this on Twitter with the author of that piece, he responded with my question of his priorities in still a very wishy-washy admission. When I pressed him to more specifically state, one way or the other, which side he would come down on given a hypothetical example of mutually exclusive positions regarding science vs Social Justice, he went radio silent.

It doesn't stop there, neither. Slate is a great example of this ideology run amok, as it regularly publishes such articles. Pieces like this are are a dime-a-dozen, there, and you'll often find similar such articles among the 'Jezebel Sister Sites' (formerly referred to as 'Gawker Sister Sites'). While you of course have the obligatory, dishonest misrepresentations and poisoning-of-the-well, the main issue is that the author questions the benefits of 'science' in relation to her conception of social justice, clearly because it doesn't all come to the conclusions that follow her preconceived notions...

At least science is helping us make progress, right? Science is sold to us as an almost holy, objective pursuit: a pure endeavor, a way of pursuing truth and only truth. As a high school senior planning to study physics and astronomy in college, I was thoroughly convinced that solving quantum gravity would trickle down to improved human relations. Of course, I was adorably naïve about ... the relationship between science and humanity’s various imperfections. 
My education as a scientist did little to disabuse me of this simple view of science as a great unifier, as an objective means of distilling information. When skeptical members of my family argued that physics was dangerous because of nuclear weapons, I pointed out that it wasn’t science that was the problem but rather how people used it. But nowhere is it more evident that this perspective is flawed than when we consider the uses and abuses of evolutionary biology and its sibling, evolutionary psychology. 
It is impossible to consider this field of science without grappling with the flaws of the institution—and of the deification—of science itself. For example: It was argued to me this week that the Google memo failed to constitute hostile behavior because it cited peer-reviewed articles that suggest women have different brains. The well-known scientist who made this comment to me is both a woman and someone who knows quite well that “peer-reviewed” and “correct” are not interchangeable terms. This brings us to the question that many have grappled with this week. It’s 2017, and to some extent scientific literature still supports a patriarchal view that ranks a man’s intellect above a woman’s. 
It’s easy to end up in an endless loop of using our prodigious scientific skills to carefully debunk the shoddy science that props up this argument. This is important and valuable work, but it’s also worth considering why this loop exists at all. Science’s greatest myth is that it doesn’t encode bias and is always self-correcting. In fact, science has often made its living from encoding and justifying bias, and refusing to do anything about the fact that the data says something’s wrong. [5]


Leave it to progressive ideologues to always feel it relevant to tell us (in this article, she actually does it twice) that, "it's the current year!". The point, though, is her rightly addressing the idea of potential biases within 'peer-reviewed' articles and journals -- but this is only trotted out in the cases of scientific results that they don't like, while trying to label people as 'science-deniers' when others point this out about 'peer-reviewed' articles and journals they do like and that agree with their preconceptions. As is always the case, sunlight works as a great disinfectant, and the Google Memo did exactly that -- the CTRL-Left is now increasingly shedding the thin sheen of its 'I fucking love science' skin, revealing the venomous snake of dogmatism and cult mentality, underneath.

It would be much more understandable if the desire to 'minimize' or 'not broadcast' the propagation of potentially socially damaging scientific truths was to prevent or minimize expressions of actual aggression or legal restrictions on individual liberty. Unfortunately, these ideologues have such nebulous, subjective, and sometimes outright arbitrary conceptions of 'aggression', that they can justify suppression of scientific reality on virtually any grounds in the name of their personal flavor of some 'greater good' that fits their narrative. In fact, they've shown themselves to be willing to actively suppress real science and shame and destroy the livelihood of anyone who dares question their narrative -- once again, pointing back to the recent Google Memo incident as a prime example that was noted, earlier.

It's important to recognize and appreciate that empirically observable, objective, biological realities promote the growth of our species. Some instinctual, lizard-brain reactions and priorities still hold value today and likely will into the foreseeable future. The more we reject less elastic gender norms -- those tied more closely with sex -- the more we fight our nature and the less effective we become as individuals and as a society. That's a losing battle that will leave us with more individual as well as societal struggle, stress, and socioeconomic retardation.

The issue is that postmodern ideologues take the subjective nature of gender too far, outright ignoring or trying to smash through the nature-based parameters set by the social construct. That there is a social construct, somewhere, doesn't suddenly mean that those norms are meaningless, or hold no value, and can or should be ignored.  Similarly, private property is a 'social construct', as are other norms like morals and ethics -- but it doesn't follow that we should toss the baby out with the bathwater, or flip it all upside-down, just because. These concepts have real social value and utility -- many to most of them are important to varying degrees and are there for good reason, for the most part. As it seems to necessitate repetition, that doesn't mean there's no room for exceptions.


There's always room for exceptions, am I right, Ziggy Stardust?
... and no, Mr. Typical Non-binary Genderqueer (???), you ain't no Ziggy Stardust.


Let's talk a little more about Ziggy Stardust, because this is important and alludes to the greater issue. Firstly, David Bowie and his expressions of androgyny were, still are, and are likely to be for the foreseeable future, extreme and not what you'd find in any typical gender expression throughout society. Despite floating between various sexual orientations -- he never demanded nor expected that people refer to him as anything other than 'he' or as what he naturally was -- a man. This then begs the question -- was Bowie's expression of his alter-ego an expression of gender, or, more simply, one of fashion? Is there a meaningful distinction between gender and fashion, at least in the context of how transgender activists have heralded David Bowie after his passing? Defenders of transgenderism claim that the difference between fashion and those who claim trans-status is that it's a question of presentation, or, more importantly, how the trans-person 'feels'. However, this is exactly what happens with one's fashion, culture and 'style'. Take a 'goth', for example, or someone expressing their style as 'urban culture'. People who express their style and fashion in this way are absolutely presenting on the outside how they feel on the inside.

Yet, sometimes, people do feel so strongly about who they are, inside, in a way that they can't naturally, outwardly present themselves, that they feel the need need to go through minor to even dangerous, major surgery to reflect this. Surely, this is where we can draw a hard line of difference between fashion or style and trans, right?

Not quite. People express their internal feelings in just this way very often. The market of body modification has always been massive and continues to grow, ranging anywhere from simple piercings, to tattoos (one-off, sleeve, chest-and-back, up to full-body), to extreme body modification. This is all in the name of expressing their internal feelings and style, which is undeniably another form of fashion.








Are all of these individuals different genders or simply expressing themselves according to a culture or how they feel, internally? By the same logic, don't they all qualify as 'trans', and if not, why not? Due to their internal feelings and unorthodox presentation, does it justify completely upsetting the linguistic and conceptual norms of their nature as male and female human beings? Surely, many of these unorthodox-style and body-modification individuals also experience varying degrees of societal alienation, limited job-opportunity, various forms of discrimination, and more, so should they qualify for legally protected-class status, as well?

Further, is gender, the way transgender ideologues typically portray it and themselves, ultimately that much different than just another fashion subculture, like furries? If you said "No" to that last question, it looks like you'd be wrong. As it turns out, 'Otherkin' is increasingly being pushed as a gender and even a sexual orientation, as well...

Otherkin in particular have increasingly begun to insist that those outside their communities recognize the non-human aspect of their identities with the same respect and deference afforded gay, transgender and non-binary folks. Often they draw explicit parallels between being "really" a dragon, Elfin warlord or bunny rabbit trapped in the body of a human, and being a transgender person. Stories about "coming out" to family members, friends and employers are common in Furry and Otherkin communities, and indeed, many members of these communities have gone so far as to brazenly lobby for inclusion beneath the LGBTQ umbrella, complaining, when rebuffed, of discrimination and hypocrisy.   
... 
It would be easy to dismiss all of this as just some ridiculous Internet sideshow, but believe it or not, the Furry/Otherkin debate taps into some vital currents within the LGBTQ community. As noted above, the definition of LGBTQ identity within the mainstream consciousness has been rapidly expanding. More and more people are being exposed daily to examples of alternative sexuality and gender identity that go far beyond traditional archetypes of the white, gay suburban couples petitioning for the right to legally marry. Growing representation of transfolk, people of color and people with non-binary gender identities (those, for example, who were born biologically intersexed, and don't compulsorily identify as either "male" or "female") is hugely important, but it's also highly contentious.

Even within LGBTQ communities, heated debates are common about who should be allowed to participate in the conversation, and whose interests deserve highest priority. Genderfluid and non-binary people in particular often struggle for validation and acceptance, both within and outside of LGBTQ spaces, and it's not hard to understand why such individuals would feel annoyed, or even attacked, by the infringement of people demanding equivalent recognition for having an attraction to anthropomorphic geese, or for being "spiritually" a lion-wolf hybrid. [6]

Indeed, what right and reason do 'Demi-agender (with Third Gender)' folks have to restrict these 'Otherkin' from claiming their place amidst the 'Genderfluids', 'Agenders', and 'Pangenders'? Where does it all end as we fall into a slippery slope of arbitrary nonsense that one can then use to justify anything and everything as a gender? A dolphin, as expressed in an appropriately scathing and prescient (as always) episode of South Park, would just be another example of 'Otherkin', would it not?

Why not also transracial (also illustrated in the same South Park episode), then, as Rachel Dolezal has so thoughtfully illuminated us on? Surely that's at least less nonsensical than being a transpecies 'Otherkin' -- and if not, why not? If these concepts are simply how one feels or wants to be perceived at the time, with no basis in empirical reality, then they're rendered utterly meaningless. Communication of concepts break down instead of assisting understanding -- and it becomes far more difficult to interact due to potential problems of 'misgendering' and the practically untenable social situation this creates.

In order to serve the needs of a socioeconomically and technologically changing society, it's important for language, as an extremely important social tool, to evolve and become more precise, efficient, and effective over time -- for easier communication in the exchange of growing and more complicated knowledge and understanding. 'Dolphin', 'table', 'man' and 'woman' are all conceptually specific words with clearly defined meanings. They need to be, in a sense, maintained as such to understand the world and people around us and to socially navigate it. Masculine and feminine are words suited very specifically for the purpose of gender -- there's no need for anything else.  Instead, a regression into nebulous pronouns like ze, zie, sie, ey, per, zir, and more, or claiming others must use the pronouns opposite to one's actual sex, or the potentially infinite numbers of pronouns one must learn and remember, only serves to devolve language and break it down -- evaporating what meaning we have a grasp on and muddying the waters instead of bringing clarity to them. In the face of such rapid socioeconomic and technological change amid a highly active, power-hungry, postmodern, progressive left, more than ever -- it's important to be vigilant in pruning and curating language and defending reason from the bottum-up, lest we fall into the pits of Orwellianism.

Since gender bimodality is intertwined with the binary nature of sex, it makes perfect sense that society hasn't reasonably conceived of gender expression much beyond the binary constraints of sex. I say reasonably, with emphasis, because there are some more... unreasonable conceptions gender...


This is a very real, widely circulated list. It's not even comprehensive.


One could say things seem to be getting a bit... unwieldy, to say the least. So where does the logical conclusion of such an Orwellian conception of sex and gender lead? As it turns out, truth can, indeed, be stranger than fiction. On social media, we find the postmodern, transgender ideologues out in full force.

 See exhibit 1 -- transgender activists with over 16,500 followers such as Zinnia Jones aren't satisfied with merely deconstructing language and denying biological reality. Instead of reflecting on the fact that maybe these ideas are on the extreme fringe for a reason, he doubles-down, claiming... well, fuck it, just read for yourself...






There is so much to unpack, here, and the delusion is reaching utterly astounding levels I truly would have never even thought possible. But wait -- there's more! If you thought we'd officially reached peak SJW.... well, we're just revving up the engines!



Oh, and this isn't just the mad ravings of one insignificant activist. This is actually a thing in the transgender activist community. Turn your eyes, now, to exhibit 2...



Wait... what -- what am I even reading, right now?


It's a woman's penis.
Part IV: The Increasingly Absurd Application of Transgender Ideology

We've all seen the outrage and heated debate surrounding transgender ideologues and bathroom use, as well. Immediately we should recognize that bathrooms don't regard gender -- they regard sex. One would expect this to effectively render the issue moot, but Social Justice ideologues aren't interested in science or reason -- it's critical theory all the way down.

In this case, it's best to answer the question of one social construct with the solution of another social construct at as local a degree as possible -- private property. If they play their cards right, an organization or business in the market might even be able to capitalize on finding a way to accommodate the personal, subjective desires of transgenders, actively supporting a niche in a way no one else does, potentially gaining them more loyal customers, whether they be transgenders or those who support such transgender causes. Despite public backlash and boycotts arguably leading to significant share losses, Target has pressed on and done this very thing for their transgender customers and employees, without any need for the State to get involved. As for the detractors, if they dislike Target's policy enough to no longer shop in their stores, then they could certainly choose to shop elsewhere. Similarly, transgendered individuals have the same exact freedom of association to do business with whom they want and don't want.

An equally problematic and slippery-slope of a response for the other side of the argument has been to make transgender bathrooms, or allow transgenders to use the bathroom of their choice, illegal. This is just the other side of the statist coin, and, as before, the State should stay out of it and leave the choice up to private property and the freedom of association of business owners. Let the market and the culture work it out.

Naturally, we can't continue this discussion without calling up the issue of transgender men utterly destroying women in sports. In a sense, we should all be glad that Social Justice ideologues are pressing so hard with these ideas, because we can usually only theorize on pushing the pedal of such arguments to the floor of absurdity. Bad ideas, taken to their logical conclusions, produce extremely bad results -- that's how you detect bad ideas. Good ideas are just the opposite, and are tested in the exact same way. Moderation is only good for stopping us from taking bad ideas too far. In sports, these ideologues are all-too-willing to see their unreasonable, anti-scientific ideology pushed to its limit, regardless of the competitive unfairness and the risks involved.

First, it was Renee Richards who played women's tennis with the speed, strength, and power of a man. This is often hailed as a win by transgender ideologues, but even Renee Richards himself acknowledges in hindsight the unfair advantage he received in competing against women. According to Wikipedia,

Richards has since expressed ambivalence about [his] legacy, and came to believe [his] past as a man provided [him] with advantages over [his] competitors, saying “Having lived for the past 30 years, I know if I’d had surgery at the age of 22, and then at 24 went on the tour, no genetic woman in the world would have been able to come close to me. And so I’ve reconsidered my opinion.”

Tennis is one thing, but even that was just dipping some toes in transgender postmodernism. Now, by putting professional, MMA, transgender men up against women in the octagon, we see this ideology satisfied in its absurd, logical conclusion, regardless of how many women's fractured eye-sockets they leave in their wake.

“I’ve fought a lot of women and have never felt the strength that I felt in a fight as I did that night. I can’t answer whether it’s because she was born a man or not because I’m not a doctor. I can only say, I’ve never felt so overpowered ever in my life and I am an abnormally strong female in my own right,” she stated. “Her grip was different, I could usually move around in the clinch against other females but couldn’t move at all in Fox’s clinch." [5]

"That's a MANNNN, baby!"


I often hear the claim that the fact that Fallon Fox didn't have a flawless record (he went 5-1) against women 'proves' that he should effectively be considered a woman and can fight women -- but that's nonsense. If he's lower skilled than his opponent, but has unfair, natural advantages as a man over women in a fight, then he could still win on those advantages, alone. Only when he faces someone of significantly greater skill to outweigh the advantages would he lose. Similarly, most men of the same height and weight as a professional MMA woman would likely get their asses handed to them, but these aren't professional fighters.


Part V: The 'Pronoun Issue', By Definition

Unfortunately, it's important that we also do the unthankable tedium of defining the words in question. Feel free to skip this part entirely if you are one of those 'literally', obviously hateful, bigoted, privileged folks who are comfortable with and left untriggered by the reality of the english language. As messy, difficult, and seemingly incoherent as the rules of the english language can sometimes be, muddied often by innuendo and figures of speech -- on this issue, thankfully, it cuts like a knife.

First, notice that man, boy, he and his all refer back to male, being an explicit reference to sex, and not gender, to which male is even defined according to X and Y chromosomes. The same follows for woman, girl, she, and her all referring back to female, being an explicit reference to sex, and not gender, to which female is even defined according to two X chromosomes.

sex, noun
  1. either of the two major forms of individuals that occur in many species and that are distinguished respectively as female or male especially on the basis of their reproductive organs and structures
  2. the sum of the structural, functional, and behavioral characteristics of organisms that are involved in reproduction marked by the union of gametes and that distinguish males and females

male, noun (adjective unlisted, but follows the noun definition)
  1. a male person, a man or a boy
  2. an organism of the sex or sexual phase that normally produces a sperm cell or male gamete
  3. a person bearing an X and Y chromosome pair in the cell nuclei and normally having a penis, scrotum, and testicles, and developing hair on the face at adolescence; a boy or man (from dictionary.com)

man, noun
  1. an adult male human being

boy, noun
  1. a male person who has not yet reached adulthood

he, pronoun
  1. that male one who is neither speaker nor hearer
  2. the male person or animal being discussed or last mentioned; that male (from dictionary.com).

his, pronoun
  1. of or relating to him or himself especially as possessor, agent, or object of an action

female, noun (adjective unlisted, but follows the noun definition)
  1. of, relating to, or being the sex that typically has the capacity to bear young or produce eggs
  2. characteristic of girls, women, or the female sex
  3. a person bearing two X chromosomes in the cell nuclei and normally having a vagina, a uterus and ovaries, and developing at puberty a relatively rounded body and enlarged breasts, and retaining a beardless face; a girl or woman (from dictionary.com)

woman, noun
  1. an adult female human being

girl, noun
  1. a female person who has not yet reached adulthood
  2. a young unmarried woman

she, pronoun
  1. that female one who is neither speaker nor hearer
  2. the female person or animal being discussed or last mentioned; that female (from dictionary.com)

her, pronoun
  1. of or relating to her or herself especially as possessor, agent, or object of an action

Lastly, notice that gender is defined as 'the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex', as in, 'one of the two sexes'. Since the definition of sex is absolutely, undeniably binary, then it follows that gender is also binary in some fashion, or bimodal, as I've laid out. Also notice that masculine and feminine, contra the sex definitions, are specifically in reference to gender, or 'having qualities appropriate to or usually associated with a man [or woman]'. This shows that these terms and concepts are far more appropriate and accurate for describing one's gender.

gender, pronoun
  1. ie, the feminine gender
  2. the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex
masculine, adjective
  1. having qualities appropriate to or usually associated with a man
  2. of, relating to, or constituting the gender that ordinarily includes most words or grammatical forms referring to males
feminine, adjective
  1. characteristic of or appropriate or unique to women
  2. of, relating to, or constituting the gender that ordinarily includes most words or grammatical forms referring to females

As for the 0.01% of the population who are, again, genuinely intersex -- they get to choose their pronouns, because they have no other choice. Transgender ideologues should be glad that they are so relatively privileged that they don't have a choice in this, in the same way that genuinely intersex people do.

Let's take the popular example of Caitlyn Jenner. Caitlyn can and should fulfill whatever gender norms he wants, do whatever he wants to and with his body, dress how he wants, date and marry who he wants, get whatever surgeries he wants, present himself however he likes, legally change his name to whatever he wants, and so on. I would never fault him for any of his life choices that make him happy. However, it is simply an outright lie or delusion for him to refer to himself as 'a woman' -- and real women are understandably annoyed by it. Thinking only a few logical steps ahead, one can easily see how every wave of feminists and transgenders could start to eat their own, over this. Think about it -- wealthy, white, 'cis-gendered', straight men like Caitlin Jenner already have 'all of the privilege' -- now they can even usurp feminists' alleged claim to ongoing victimhood, to boot? Say it isn't so, as this sounds like their worst possible nightmare! In any case, Caitlyn Jenner is not a woman and never will be -- he is a highly feminized male. He's 'like a woman' in some ways, and some may even consider him more attractive than some real women (I disagree, and find him to be a very crude attempt at feminization, but that's a value judgement on my part), and that's fine -- but that still doesn't make him anything close to a woman. Any claim to the contrary is an error at best, and fraudulent at worst -- and particularly so in the dating scene where the fallout could be, understandably, much worse.

There is a very cut-and-dry way to go about all of this. If one thinks it necessary to think about someone's gender (masculine vs feminine) in relation to their sex (he vs she)...

  1. He is masculine.
  2. She is feminine.
  3. She is masculine.
  4. He is feminine.

That's it. Feel free to add 'very or 'slightly', as needed. As we can see, the english language already has all of the tools necessary to describe someone's gender expression, and it's done simply and cleanly in an easy-to-understand, widely established way. Better yet -- leave the gender out, and simply assume based on their gender expression that a person is simply a man or a woman, and just hope that they're portraying their nature honestly enough and are communicating with you in good faith. Social Justice Warriors might be outraged at the 'literally horrifying' and 'oppressive' nature of this all, but we shouldn't distort reality because of their feelings or because someone wants to believe a delusion or engage in fraud.


Part VI: Vanguardism and the Anti-scientific Regression of Leftist Academia

So where does this intellectual cancer come from? What is the source of all of this confusion and upset, this contrived olympics of victimhood, grievance and oppression? To begin, we must first understand and recognize the difference between the hard sciences (generally, STEM, or, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) and the soft sciences (generally, HSS, or, the Humanities and Social Sciences):

Hard science and soft science are colloquial terms used to compare scientific fields on the basis of perceived methodological rigor, exactitude, and objectivity. Roughly speaking natural sciences (e.g. biology, chemistry, physics) are considered "hard", whereas the social sciences (e.g. economics, psychology, sociology) are usually described as "soft". 
Precise definitions vary, but features often cited as characteristic of hard science include producing testable predictions, performing controlled experiments, relying on quantifiable data and mathematical models, a high degree of accuracy and objectivity, higher levels of consensus, faster progression of the field, greater explanatory success, cumulativeness, replicability, and generally applying a purer form of the scientific method. A closely related idea (originating in the nineteenth century with Auguste Comte) is that scientific disciplines can be arranged into a hierarchy of hard to soft on the basis of factors such as rigor, "development", and whether they are basic or applied. [7]

This aspect and focus on degrees of rigor and objectivity in differentiating the sciences is important. Recognizing where a field sits amongst this hierarchy is helpful in knowing how much subjectivity, speculation, and 'artful interpretation' is required in place of the scientific method in reaching conclusions and according prescriptions. In knowing this, we can more or less confidently employ some critical thinking, as laymen, as a bullshit detector.

Prior to the Age of Enlightenment, it was the clergy; the religious authorities that held the most voluntary authority (as opposed to the nobility who held the most coercive authority) over the common folk, and thus also attracted those in the greatest pursuit of power. However, in a society that has increasingly, over time, held a similar kind of reverence for science and the sciences as the new voluntary authority, understandably at the expense of the dogma of the clergy, it should come as no surprise that the modern ideologue, in the pursuit of power, would now want to be perceived as a kind of scientific authority to hold greater sway over their perception of the unwashed masses, with the ideologue sitting, naturally, closer to the top.

Ideology mixed with authority is a powerful, albeit often dangerous and slippery mix, so while the natural rigor of the hard-sciences would be most resistant to abuse, which of the sciences would be most vulnerable to the infiltration of ideology and that we should be most wary of? Why, the least rigorous, the least objective, the most interpretive, of course, and in particular, that which seeks to steer the course of societal norms and public policy. What we find at the bottom of this hierarchy of rigor, beneath the social sciences, are the humanities, and, further, amongst the dregs of rigor within the humanities, you'd find interdisciplinary fields such as the rightfully notorious Gender Studies. As such, one should not expect nor perceive those with a degree in Gender Studies to be scientists, but rather more along the lines of professional activists. Further, the more invested in time and money (read, debt) in attaining whatever degree in this field they have, the more is at stake for them with respect to the achievements (or lack thereof) of their professional activism.

Thankfully, we can acknowledge this all as an a priori framework of warranted degrees of skepticism amongst the sciences for the layman, but what does the actual data say, and does it corroborate our reason? As it turns out, there has been some credible analyses on this front. One primary way we measure scholarly impact and the usefulness published works is by citations:

"[T]he institutionalized practice of citations and references in the sphere of learning is not a trivial matter. [Readers] located outside the domain of science and scholarship may regard the lowly footnote or the remote endnote or the bibliographic parenthesis as a dispensable nuisance .. [But] these are in truth central to the [academic] incentive system and an underlying sense of distributive justice, that do much to energize the advancement of knowledge." [8] -- Dr. Robert K. Merton, Sociologist

Now, applying this criterion to the various academic fields, today, we find that,

Non-citation rates vary enormously by field. “Only” 12% of medicine articles are not cited, compared to about 82% (!) for the humanities. It’s 27% for natural sciences and 32% for social sciences... Even the 12% uncited rate for medicine seems large to me, particularly given what medical research costs. The one-third rate for social science and more than 80% for humanities are really troubling. [9]


Well, will you look at that. As expected, the humanities have some very serious problems when it comes to scholarly impact and relevance, but it doesn't even end, there. One other place we can peel back the skin of the field of Gender Studies is in its peer-review process, which is at the core of all academic scholarship and required prior to the publication of new research. For those unfamiliar,

Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people of similar competence to the producers of the work (peers). It constitutes a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards of quality, improve performance, and provide credibility. In academia, scholarly peer review is often used to determine an academic paper's suitability for publication. [10]

Unfortunately for this field, peeling back its skin exposed a very serious case of necrosis amidst the dregs of rigor of which it already resides. Back in 1996, Physics Professor Alan Sokal submitted a purposefully absurd article to Social Text, an academic journal of postmodern studies (gender being one of them):

Sokal said he was inspired to submit the bogus article after reading Higher Superstition (1994), in which authors Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt claim that some humanities journals would publish anything as long as it had "the proper leftist thought" and quoted (or was written by) well-known leftist thinkers. [11]

On the day of its publication, he exposed it as the hoax it was, [sparking] a debate about the scholarly merit of commentary about the physical sciences by those in the humanities; the influence of postmodern philosophy on social disciplines in general; academic ethics, including whether Sokal was wrong to deceive the editors and readers of Social Text; and whether Social Text had exercised appropriate intellectual rigor.

"B-b-but that was over 20 years ago!", you say. "Surely, things have changed, since then. Gender Studies and postmodern thought is far more serious, scholarly, and intellectually honest, now. It must have learned its lesson, at least... right?"

Wrong. Sokal has been something of inspiration to some in the face of our current political and ideological environment, it seems...

"Every once in awhile it is necessary and desirable to expose extreme ideologies for what they are by carrying out their arguments and rhetoric to their logical and absurd conclusion, which is why we are proud to publish this expose of a hoaxed article published in a peer-reviewed journal today. Its ramifications are unknown but one hopes it will help rein in extremism in this and related areas." -- Michael Shermer, Editor-in-chief of Skeptic 
"The androcentric scientific and meta-scientific evidence that the penis is the male reproductive organ is considered overwhelming and largely uncontroversial."

That’s how we began. We used this preposterous sentence to open a “paper” consisting of 3,000 words of utter nonsense posing as academic scholarship. Then a peer-reviewed academic journal in the social sciences accepted and published it.

This paper should never have been published. Titled, “The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct,” our paper “argues” that “The penis vis-à-vis maleness is an incoherent construct. We argue that the conceptual penis is better understood not as an anatomical organ but as a gender-performative, highly fluid social construct.” As if to prove philosopher David Hume’s claim that there is a deep gap between what is and what ought to be, our should-never-have-been-published paper was published in the open-access (meaning that articles are freely accessible and not behind a paywall), peer-reviewed journal Cogent Social Sciences. (In case the PDF is removed, we’ve archived it.)
...

[We] wrote an absurd paper loosely composed in the style of post-structuralist discursive gender theory. The paper was ridiculous by intention, essentially arguing that penises shouldn’t be thought of as male genital organs but as damaging social constructions. We made no attempt to find out what “post-structuralist discursive gender theory” actually means. We assumed that if we were merely clear in our moral implications that maleness is intrinsically bad and that the penis is somehow at the root of it, we could get the paper published in a respectable journal. 
... 
We intended to test the hypothesis that flattery of the academic Left’s moral architecture in general, and of the moral orthodoxy in gender studies in particular, is the overwhelming determiner of publication in an academic journal in the field. That is, we sought to demonstrate that a desire for a certain moral view of the world to be validated could overcome the critical assessment required for legitimate scholarship. Particularly, we suspected that gender studies is crippled academically by an overriding almost-religious belief that maleness is the root of all evil. On the evidence, our suspicion was justified. 
...
“The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct” should not have been published on its merits because it was actively written to avoid having any merits whatsoever. The paper is academically worthless nonsense. The question that now needs to be answered is, “How can we restore the reliability of the peer-review process? [12]

The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct was published in a peer-reviewed, academic journal favorable to courses like Gender Studies, showing how increasingly biased, non-rigorous, and generally unscientific the postmodern left of academia really is, all the while claiming to be beacons of science and reason. These kinds of courses and theories and the academics who peddle them are at the heart of much of this alleged victim-class activism, and this hoax did delectably well in exposing its and the journal's flavor of vacuous, dishonest, postmodern sophistry for what it's been, all along -- mostly meaningless drivel utilized as an ad-hoc excuse to advance a political agenda.

These snake-oil salesfolk, posing as scholarly professors and researchers (including their lackeys on social and popular media), aren't interested in knowledge, reason, and science. They fancy themselves as a kind of elite vanguard -- professional activists interested in little more than satisfying their narrative and institutionalizing a postmodern, progressive political agenda, heavily influenced by, if not rooted in, Marxist theory. In contemporary human civilization where standards of living are higher and actual oppression is lower than ever before (particularly in, ironically enough, developed western nations where these ideas are primarily being propagated) -- oppression and its purveyors must be found, at any cost, with critical theory serving as the justification to create these oppressors, ex nihilo, if necessary.

What's especially unfortunate is that so many who took such useless, self-destructive courses and who've paid good money to learn and grow and prepare for the future, have instead been set significantly behind their peers socially, intellectually, and professionally -- all while being mired in a vicious cycle of student debt.

 Needless to say, as soon as someone tries to cite some new gender research or 'study' that satisfies whatever political narrative they're pushing, be sure to turn your bullshit meter on and engage in some critical thinking to question the legitimacy of whatever it is they're peddling. That's not to say it's necessarily a complete fabrication, but it's warranted to 'call foul' and, pun intended, throw a big red flag on the field and take a closer look.
Part VII: In Conclusion

Whenever I bring these issues up within my circles, I'm often told that these 'are not libertarian issues' and that they're not relevant. This is a mistake for two reasons...

Firstly, just because something is primarily cultural and may not necessarily be 'a [thin, as opposed to thick] libertarian issue' doesn't mean it's worth ignoring. For now, while this rising issue in the United States is primarily a cultural one (it's increasingly a legal one, elsewhere in the western world), these ideologues are still trying to cause very real, epistemological chaos regarding science, reason, and our ability to communicate. We're seeing critical theory in action and on a rising scale, and this is but one angle and method of instituting radical change. The idea of this ideology reaching critical mass or a majority any time soon, if ever, is unlikely -- but a majority is not necessary. Samuel Adams once said, "It does not take a majority to prevail... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men," and while true, there is a darker side of this coin. An irate, tireless minority can also use sophistry, pseudoscience, groupthink, and various social pressures to dupe the masses into giving away their freedom and taking it away from others -- especially when this minority utterly dominates the education of future voters and future government officials at every level.

It's the same story we, as libertarians, see repeated all too often and complain about, and so we must always arm ourselves and others with a firm foundation of science, reason, and the value of liberty when harbingers of the State let slip their cues.

Secondly, for libertarians only concerned with issues immediately regarding the State -- it would be extremely short-sighted to dismiss all of this, since we should understand that for these people, these issues are all derived from motivations of power. Voluntary, social mechanisms such as shame, guilt, protesting, and consumer action such as boycotts only provide so much of this power, and the progressive left and their Social Justice Warriors have never been content with limiting their strategies and tactics to these methods. Remember, they thoroughly believe in and support increasing State power. Since there's enough of the American population that haven't and simply wouldn't be so easily persuaded or manipulated to just hand them the power they desire, the only next logical step is to beat those resistant over the head with the State. These ideologies, strategies, and tactics are rooted in a postmodern twist on Marxist thought -- they're always looking for and finding some kind of 'oppressor', real or imagined -- and so it's important to realize that the end-game for these ideologues is to have their personal, subjective values imposed on the rest of us by force, if necessary.

Ultimately, freedom of speech and association is not a value these ideologues put much stock in, and they see these concepts as forms of aggression in-and-of-themselves. As such, we should have the foresight to see that their end game is ultimately to codify prohibitions on speech into law, and to create increasingly arbitrary 'protected classes' enforced by the State. As we know, the State is nothing but a hammer, and to a hammer, everything is a nail, so expect aggressive punishment for violating these laws. It would be one thing if all of these issues were just about asking or publicly expressing these desires and values -- but this is not the case and never will be.

Remember... chaos is a ladder, and for the methods employed by the progressive, postmodern, CTRL-Left -- it is a ladder that leads to State enforcement. 
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