The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

The Trans Cult and Gender Hypochondria

Posted on | August 5, 2016 | 83 Comments

“Medical students’ disease (also known as second year syndrome or intern’s syndrome) is a condition frequently reported in medical students, who perceive themselves to be experiencing the symptoms of a disease that they are studying.”
— Wikipedia

Question: Are young people being psychologically damaged by exposure to a cacophony of information about “gender” and sexuality?

The transgender cult has been accused by many critics of exploiting adolescent confusion, persuading emotionally disturbed young people that “transition” is a panacea, the cure for all their problems:

When will the medical and psychological professions wake up? . . .
There is an actual process of indoctrination going on on the Internet, and most liberal parents are simply unaware of its power and reach.

Alas, political correctness — backed by the authority of academia, media and powerful LGBT lobbying groups — has made it impossible for any psychologist to challenge the regnant superstition. Anyone can (and should) be whatever they want to be, all the “experts” insist, and those who oppose this agenda are accused of inciting hatred that might cause the helpless victims of “gender dysphoria” to commit suicide.

Suppose a kid is socially awkward, troubled by insecurity about their body, struggling to fit into the teenage dating scene. These are such commonplace woes of adolescence as to be almost universal. Ah, but now we have the Internet, and guess what the awkward teen finds there?

Young people who for some reason feel dissatisfied with their sex often go to reddit’s various transgender communities to ask for advice.
A 14 year old kid asks for advice on two different subreddits about how to talk to family members about gender issues and about medications like estrogen.
On one of the posts, an adult invites the 14 year old to take contact privately. . . .
In the other post, concrete advice about how to obtain prescription medication illegally is given, complete with dosages . . .
This story sounds familiar to anyone who’s been paying attention to the stories many newly trans teenagers post online. An intense period of bingeing on social media accounts of being trans leading to the teen suddenly identifying as trans themselves. . . .
Teenagers have always been struggling to fit in, to figure out who they are, to label themselves. But it’s not until now that discovering your true self involves taking hormones and getting surgery. And it’s not until now that questioning whether it is wise for teens to be getting medication advice online is bigoted.

What is going on here involves suggestibility. Young people are naïve, and when adolescent misfits are trying to figure out the cause of their unhappiness, they are particularly vulnerable to this kind of influence. Sexually confused teenagers often erect a defensive shell to conceal their inner turmoil, maintaining a “good kid” façade that prevents parents from recognizing signs of trouble. Instead, they seek answers on the Internet, where “supportive” strangers are always eager to offer advice. So you now have children as young as 13 getting amateur counseling via Reddit, Tumblr, etc., and cult is not too strong a word to describe the mentality that prevails within these insular online communities.

A brief digression: Remember the Columbine massacre? A couple of teenage weirdos started messing around in “Goth” culture, hanging out with other weirdos and, unbeknownst to their parents, hatched an elaborate plan to perpetrate a bloody slaughter at their high school. After the shootings, people were shocked that warning signs had been missed:

In 1996, Eric Harris created a private website on America Online. Harris initially created the site to host gaming levels he and his friend Dylan Klebold created for use in the video game Doom, primarily for friends. On this site, Harris began a blog, which included jokes and short journal entries with thoughts on parents, school, and friends. By the end of the year, the site contained instructions on how to cause mischief, as well as instructions on how to make explosives, and blogs in which he described the trouble he and Klebold were causing. Beginning in early 1997, the blog postings began to show the first signs of Harris’s ever-growing anger against society.
Harris’s site attracted few visitors, and caused no concern until March 1998. Klebold gave the web address to Brooks Brown, a former friend of Harris. Brown’s mother had filed numerous complaints with the Jefferson County Sheriff’s office concerning Harris, as she thought he was dangerous. The website contained numerous death threats directed against Brown: Klebold knew that if Brooks accessed the address, he would discover the content and inform his parents, and likely the authorities would be notified. After Brown’s parents viewed the site, they contacted the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office. The investigator Michael Guerra was told about the website. When he accessed it, Guerra discovered numerous violent threats directed against the students and teachers of Columbine High School. Other material included blurbs that Harris had written about his general hatred of society, and his desire to kill those who annoyed him.

If this kind of red flag about a potential mass murder could be overlooked, how much easier is it to ignore signs that your kid is struggling to cope with adolescent sexual problems? And in the same way that Eric Harris used his America Online account as an outlet for his problems, many kids today are secretly turning to social media and online forums as a way to deal with their “gender” issues and, in most cases, parents don’t have the slightest clue of what’s going on.

One reason I have spent two years hammering away at radical feminism is that so many people are unaware of what kind of craziness is being fomented in the name of “equality.” The destruction of due-process rights in campus sexual assault investigations is an example of how extreme ideas can make their way into “mainstream” acceptance, and we see a very similar phenomenon in how the transgender cult gained influence.

Consider the case of Florida State University junior Rachel “Charlie” Andelman, “a female-to-male trans person who felt that transition was absolutely essential for me to continue living”:

Now, I didn’t always know that I was transgender. For me, it took a lot of self-exploration and discovery, not to mention countless hours of research and reading before even learning the word transgender. I went through stages: In ninth grade, I identified as a bisexual girl, but I was unfortunately outed to everyone in my small private school. I didn’t get a great reaction — some girl told everyone while I was at home sick, and when I returned the next day I was literally mobbed by questions and insults. A horde of people surrounded me and shouted obscenities at me. In tenth grade, I tried conforming to the compulsory heterosexuality that my school seemed to love at the time in a half-hearted attempt to avoid more bullying. I grew my hair out and talked about having crushes on boys because that’s what girls were expected to do; it quickly became a self-defense tactic. In eleventh grade, I publicly owned my sexuality, believing myself to now be a lesbian. I fought to start a Gay Straight Alliance at my school (and was its inaugural president the next year), and even dated a girl briefly. But none of these labels felt right to me. By the end of that year, I thought back to everything I had seen and read and realized: Oh god. That’s me. I’m transgender.
I didn’t come out until October, 2014, at the start of my freshman year of college at Florida State University. Ironically, I was placed in the all-girls dorm. My roommate was trying to figure out her own sexuality at the time, and we ended up coming out to each other the same night. We were watching the show Once Upon a Time, and I turned to her and asked, “You know how I don’t go by my birth name? Would you mind trying out different pronouns for me?” She hugged me and told me of course she would, and within a minute of returning our attention to the show, she blurted out, “I’m a lesbian.”
She and her family were incredibly supportive of me while my parents were struggling to get used to the idea; I don’t really know what I would have done without her. I ended up telling every friend I made from that moment on that I was trans, and all of them fully respected my name and pronouns.

This kind of narrative is becoming surprisingly common in recent years. Why? My suspicion — an educated guess — is that we are witnessing an unexpected consequence of a hypersexualized youth culture. Forty years ago, when I was a horny teenager growing up in the Bible Belt, we were “working on our night moves,” as Bob Seger sang, in a society where all the responsible forces of grown-up society were trying to stop us. Kids didn’t have 110 cable channels to choose from, and there were no cell phones or laptops (because Al Gore hadn’t invented the Internet yet) and information about sex was almost as difficult to obtain as sex itself. Fast-forward to the 21st century, however, and kids are growing up in a world where they are bombarded with sex — sex! sex! sex! — from every direction. Afternoon reruns of sitcoms like Friends, Seinfeld, Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory are full of sex-related storylines, many primetime TV programs feature gay characters, and any kid with Internet access can find a cornucopia of hard-core pornography.

Growing up in a culture shaped by this media-driven sexual tsunami — even if you protect your kids from it, most of their peers are exposed to it — many young people are psychologically traumatized. As bad as a constant diet of sex-saturated media is for adults, what is the effect on kids trying to form their identities amid this pornographic onslaught?

Back when we were “working on mysteries without any clues,” to quote Seger again, our direct experience of sex (or, at least our hope of achieving such experience) was not so confused by the kaleidoscopic proliferation of cultural scripts with which teenager are today confronted. Whatever confusion we experienced was authentic, rather than the result of trying to conform to some prefabricated “gender identity” in the LGBTQIA Acronym Rainbow. Teenagers experimented and improvised and — here’s the important part — none of our sexual activity was approved by grown-up society. We were all wicked sinners engaged in fornication, consumed by carnal lust and, as bad as was the threat of punishment in the eternal fires of Hell, we knew we would face hell right here on earth if our parents ever caught us.

Sex was bad and dirty and wrong, and that was half the fun of it, really.

Yet here in the 21st century, Rachel Andelman felt the need to “identify” as bisexual at age 14 when, in point of fact, Florida law doesn’t even consider 14-year-olds capable of consenting to sex. By the time she was a junior, she came out as a lesbian, already sufficiently fluent in radical feminist jargon to invoke “compulsory heterosexuality” as a force of patriarchal oppression. (When I was a high-school junior, heterosexuality sure as heck wasn’t “compulsory,” or else I’d have been getting some of that action.) Whether or not Rachel Andelman ever could have been heterosexual, had a mad scientist erased her memory and transported her in a time machine to 1976, is one of those interesting questions that must remain forever in the realm of hypothetical speculation. Certainly there were many teenage girls back then who were awkward and confused, but they didn’t have the Internet to tell them what to do about their confusion, whereas Rachel Andelman did “countless hours of research and reading” before arriving at her transgender destination at age 18.

Oh, and what a strange coincidence that her freshman roommate at college was also going through a sexual identity crisis. Except it’s not a coincidence, it’s a trend. Isn’t everybody in college going through a sexual identity crisis nowadays? LGBTQIA — pick a letter! Any letter!

When I was in college, freshmen went out for Rush Week and pledged a fraternity. Now, kids pledge a sexuality. Is there a hazing initiation after you join a sexuality during LGBTQIA Rush Week?

It’s easy to joke about these kooks, but while the transgender college girl looks like a comedy from an objective point of view, can you imagine the mortification of parents whose kids get sucked into this cult? One day you have a daughter named Rachel, and then . . . Well, watch the video:

So now “Charlie” Andelman is all over the Internet. More than 2,500 people have watched that video, and another 1,200 people have watched this video in which “Charlie” shows off “his” surgically-altered chest:

As I say, it’s easy to laugh at the absurd results of this bizarre Frankenstein experiment. The “man” produced by hormones and surgery is a pathetic simulacrum, a sort of flesh-and-blood costume manufactured in the guise of “treatment” for an alleged disorder that Rachel/“Charlie” self-diagnosed with the enthusiastic assistance of her/“his” Internet friends. Yet this is not a comedy, it’s a tragedy. Our hypersexualized culture is producing traumatic effects, including the kind of gender hypochondria which led Rachel into an obsession with the idea of becoming “Charlie” simply because she was so frightened by the difficulties of being what this culture says a girl must be.

OK, that was a amateur diagnosis I am not qualified to give. I’m a journalist, not a psychologist, but I know crazy when I see it, and I’ve been studying radical feminism long enough to reach a few educated guesses as to how our society has descended so far into this vortex of madness.

“Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools” — all the clever minds of the elite intelligentsia told us that Scientific Progress was the answer to our problems. Just get rid of the ignorant prejudices of so-called “common sense,” said the experts, and forget about those ridiculous Bronze Age superstitions you inherited from a wandering tribe of Mesopotamian shepherds. “Trust us — we’re scientists!”

Somehow the promised feminist utopia of gender equality hasn’t materialized despite 40 years of Scientific Progress. Human nature remains what it always was, and old-fashioned common sense still produces better results than do the newfangled theories of the intelligentsia. One of these days perhaps The Gods of the Copybook Headings may be proven wrong, but so far they’re batting a thousand.




 

Category: Sex Trouble

Comments

83 Responses to “The Trans Cult and Gender Hypochondria”

  1. java
    August 6th, 2016 @ 2:45 pm

    “I doubt you could find a libertarian who thought that medical care of any kind should be paid by government.”
    you are already paying for transexuals’s surgery in the army and in jail and possibly in some government jobs. secondly the libertarians never strongly opposed obamacare, therefore it is coming, you will be paying for breast surgery for 60 year old transexuals, while women breast cancer survivors will be denied. If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. Maybe getting stoned all day is not a great idea for problem solving.
    It is a crime in some countries to manipulate a person not entirely capable to make decisions, whether senile, temporarily under the effect of medicines etc. This is what a civilized society does, other than that keep your mutilated daughter. Today is her breast, Tomorrow is her liver.

  2. Quartermaster
    August 6th, 2016 @ 3:32 pm

    Just be sure to phone home.

  3. Quartermaster
    August 6th, 2016 @ 3:32 pm

    He’s prolly a city slicker. Just make allowances.

  4. Quartermaster
    August 6th, 2016 @ 3:35 pm

    The first “cattle drives” in this country were of hogs. The approach of the “Hog Drovers” was reason to lock your daughters up. We went to bovines because they could grow on the range where as hogs could not. Although, it was common in the south to turn hogs into the woods to forage, then have “round ups” to take the hogs to market.

  5. NeoWayland
    August 6th, 2016 @ 3:47 pm

    Where in the World do you think that libertarians never strongly opposed Obamacare? We were the first ones saying that government health care doesn’t work. We pointed to VA care and Medicare as examples. I myself started making noise about Hillarycare, something else we weren’t supposed to take a close look at.

    Basically libertarians do not think government should mess with people’s lives.

    ?American libertarians want both personal freedom and economic freedom, and they know that always comes with responsibility. Libertarians also believe that the biggest threat to personal freedom and economic freedom is a large government with expanding powers.?

  6. NeoWayland
    August 6th, 2016 @ 3:51 pm

    ?I don’t want the “bad choices” removed “for my own good.” I believe that act of choosing helps people to recognize the consequences of their actions. I think that competing with the “bad choices” results in improved benefits in the “good choices.”

    A libertarian wants the government to leave him and his alone. The only thing that really unites libertarians is their desire for freedom for themselves and their property.

    A libertarian wants the government at all levels to be smaller than absolutely necessary.?
    —Original Pagan•Vigil FAQ

  7. NeoWayland
    August 6th, 2016 @ 3:57 pm

    Neighbor, libertarians were shouting about Obamacare before the Republican leadership could decide to make nice. We were also shouting about sub-prime mortgages as far back as Carter.

    It still comes down to one thing. Government is not your friend.

    You want to blame someone for not not making noise before Obamacare was passed, check out the Republican leadership. Libertarians did make noise, nobody else listened.

  8. NeoWayland
    August 6th, 2016 @ 3:59 pm

    Not that it should matter one bit, but I don’t imbibe. Nor do I drink.

    Nor is that unusual, libertarian or not.

  9. NeoWayland
    August 6th, 2016 @ 4:07 pm

    Again, if you want to go after people if they manipulate others, where does it stop? You for example have some terrible ideas about libertarians. Should you be protected? Should I put you in a facility? Should I take control of your money and assets “for your own good?”

    If I do go after the people who manipulated you, should I imprison them or just kill them outright? Should I burn everything that they wrote? Should I make laws limiting how people should think?

    Better I think to insist that people are responsible for their own choices and have to live with the consequences.

    It can’t be anything else and still be freedom.

  10. NeoWayland
    August 6th, 2016 @ 4:17 pm

    Except that if homosexuality occurs among other species, your argument really doesn’t work, does it?

    Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity

  11. Quartermaster
    August 6th, 2016 @ 4:34 pm

    Misery loves company. That’s why Satan is doing all he can to drag any human he can down to hell with him. He has some pretty powerful useful idiots too.

  12. Finrod Felagund
    August 6th, 2016 @ 6:04 pm

    There’s an old joke that the Internet wouldn’t be what it is today without Asperger’s.

  13. NeoWayland
    August 6th, 2016 @ 6:36 pm

    Yeah, I heard that one.

    I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen it used as an excuse.

  14. M. Thompson
    August 6th, 2016 @ 7:45 pm

    Pretty much. Pigs will eat you out of house and home, while sheep and cattle won’t.

  15. Kirby McCain
    August 6th, 2016 @ 8:58 pm

    Rub the lotion on its skin.

  16. java
    August 7th, 2016 @ 6:44 am

    This is all bullshits paid by the homo propaganda. Animals respond to other needs that are not sexual or reproductive such as male dominance. The simple fact that this is seen in a immensely tiny fraction of animals, some of which not even mammals (and most of which observed in captivity where behaviours are conditioned by boredom and unnatural settings) speak volumes. But since you are homosexual, can you explain to me why the ‘it happens in nature’ works only when you need it. In nature you never see the male of the species taking care of the cubs, so explain me why we are producing babies in labs for faggots?

  17. java
    August 7th, 2016 @ 6:46 am

    libertarians were all into electing democraps to have free pot. Deal with it.

  18. java
    August 7th, 2016 @ 6:49 am

    this is an idiotic comparison. The faggot community (of which apparently you are either a great fan or part of yourself) brainwashes a woman into removing her breast and pro-faggot libertarians find no objection to it. Again, I hope it happens in your household. For me, faggots were better in the closet and libertarians were better in some socialist paradise that gives away free pot.

  19. java
    August 7th, 2016 @ 6:50 am

    And you do not even engagé in homosexual behaviour despite promoting it every post.

  20. NeoWayland
    August 7th, 2016 @ 8:04 am

    As Steve Skubinna pointed out to you, not all libertarians are into drugs. Just as not all Republicans are into three martini lunches. Even there, you’d be hard pressed to find a libertarian who was interested in “free” anything. TANSTAAFL.

  21. NeoWayland
    August 7th, 2016 @ 8:11 am

    I promote freedom and liberty. It’s my thing. You have the right to do as you choose provided you don’t interfere in another’s choice. You’re also responsible for your own actions.

    Specifically when it comes to sex, I’ve two and only two rules. Consenting adults, and if you promised to be someone’s one and only, you’re off limits to everyone else.

    I don’t tell you who to sleep with, and I expect that you won’t tell others who they can’t sleep with.

    You might know it as the Golden Rule. If you don’t want it done to you, don’t do it to others.

  22. NeoWayland
    August 7th, 2016 @ 8:22 am

    No, it’s a question of liberty.

    “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” The Ethic of Reciprocity is arguably the single most important and universal basis for human advancement and is the basis for all true liberty. My favorite fun version comes from Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure – “Be excellent to each other. And party on, dudes!”

    My paranoid version, the parity test, is a little more blunt. “Don’t do it if you don’t want it done to you.”

    So if you don’t want people taking your freedoms, don’t mess with another’s freedom.

    It’s a general case.

  23. NeoWayland
    August 7th, 2016 @ 8:31 am

    I’m actually straight.

    If there is even one example of animal homosexuality in the wild, then your argument doesn’t work.

    Obviously you don’t know much about sea horses. Or marmosets. Or wolves. Or penguins, Or sandpipers.

  24. News of the Week (August 7th, 2016) | The Political Hat
    August 7th, 2016 @ 1:24 pm

    […] The Trans Cult and Gender Hypochondria Question: Are young people being psychologically damaged by exposure to a cacophony of information about “gender” and sexuality? […]

  25. java
    August 8th, 2016 @ 6:38 am

    libertarians are for the most part leftwingers who are ashamed of the democratic party. Despite being a useless small number they helped elect democrats everywhere. The blame is on you. BTW, this blog is not libertarian. It is conservative with Christian leanings. Why don’t you go to reason.com to list your libertarian bullshits?

  26. java
    August 8th, 2016 @ 6:43 am

    Freedom and liberty are not suing the photographer, the baker and the florist, so your peculiar interest of taking another male’s member inside your anus and promoting it as a celebrated way of live is affecting a baker, a photographer and a florist. You are into fascism and coercion. What are faggot “libertarians” such as yourself doing for the baker, florist and photographer?
    (and soon to come, for the women who do not want to share bathrooms with transsexuals)?
    By allowing faggot marriage you are sucking up resources from the pool of social security money which was once only for male-female married couples. This is unjust appropriation of money you do not contribute to create. So here is a way in which your bullshit desire of maaarriage has increased government size and delivered services to undeserving people.
    nice try libertarian, you are being dismissed on every count about your ‘libertarianism’. Maybe because faggotry takes over.

    I will start being impressed when you tell your faggot friends about the golden rule.

  27. java
    August 8th, 2016 @ 6:46 am

    your faggot friends messed with the freedom of conscience of the photographer, the baker and the florist. When will you start telling them about the golden rule? having a cake baked for a pretended union is not a right.

  28. java
    August 8th, 2016 @ 6:53 am

    ‘I’m actually straight.’

    I am actually the tooth fairy.

    “Obviously you don’t know much about sea horses. Or marmosets. Or wolves. Or penguins, Or sandpipers.”

    obviously you do not know much about the black widow or the praying mantis. Maybe we should legalize and celebrate sexual cannibalism the way we celebrate faggotry. That’s the way. BTW, the first popular example of sexual cannibalism was by a homosexual man in Germany, Armin Meiwes. Maybe you have a point. Homosexuality might be an relic of our past as animals. Well, the rest of the population evolved to human form. You and your faggot friend didn’t.

    And also dominant males killing the offspring of another male to get the female pregnant again. Let’s legalize. After all, the faggots of the world are telling us that if animals do it, then it is fine.
    Lastly, to be able to promote homosexuality as normal just because animals do it, you should be able to find it in ANY species, not just some (a fragment of the millions of species present in nature).
    The problem with the pro-faggot like you is that you see 2 lions in a documentary rubbing their heads together and you scream like a girl “they must be ghey! see, I am normal”.
    Penguins are also seen engaging in necrophilia. Let’s celebrate it among humans, because faggots say so!

  29. NeoWayland
    August 8th, 2016 @ 1:16 pm

    ?libertarians are for the most part leftwingers?

    Not correct.

    I come here because I want my ideas and arguments tested. I can’t do that in an echo chamber. I return the favor because nothing is free.

  30. NeoWayland
    August 8th, 2016 @ 1:25 pm

    In case you didn’t notice, I spoke against suing the baker, the florist, and the photographer. Also the bookseller, the gun owner, and yes (gasp!), the Christian.

    I’ve also said many, many times that government doesn’t belong in the marriage business.

  31. NeoWayland
    August 8th, 2016 @ 1:30 pm

    I already did.

    I even spoke out against the Supreme Court decision. Many, many times in fact.

    Obviously you don’t know what libertarians stand for. Hint, it’s in the name.

  32. NeoWayland
    August 8th, 2016 @ 1:36 pm

    I gave you examples of males taking care of the young.

    You’re really reaching here.

    I’m not attacking you. I’m just telling you that your beliefs don’t control other people. Just as other’s beliefs don’t control you. Parity.

  33. JohnnyL53
    August 8th, 2016 @ 4:28 pm

    I find it interesting that almost all trans generally become as extreme a gender stereotype as they can. Males to females become extreme fems, FTM’s become as lumberjack as they can, growing those wispy beards, wearing plaid flannels and work boots. I know there are exceptions but they just tend to prove the rule.

    They tell us on one hand that gender can be fluid, people can be what they want but what they want is to be a stereotype.