Transgender Victimhood Narrative Sustains Further Embarrassment

Posted on | September 2, 2017 | 3 Comments

 

Nothing is more important to the self-esteem of Democrats than the belief that they are fighting on behalf of Victims of Oppression. The Democrat Party is organized as an identity-politics coalition and promotes the idea that victims exist categorically and oppression is systemic: All women are victims of sexism, all black people are victims of racism, all gay people are victims of homophobia, etc. Democrats and their media allies wage continual propaganda campaigns to sell these identity group victimhood narratives. This is how, for example, the shooting death of a robbery suspect in Ferguson, Missouri, got turned into a nationwide crisis, because the Democrats who run CNN decided this particular incident should be the subject of 24/7 coverage in order to promote the victimhood narrative of “Black Lives Matter.”

Commercial conglomerates are eager to play along with this propaganda, as a matter of corporate public relations, because they don’t want to be perceived as guilty of “hate,” which is the implicit accusation against anyone who disputes the social-justice victimhood narrative. This explains why so much ballyhoo accompanied L’Oreal’s announcement last month that a British DJ named Munroe Burgdorf would become the makeup company’s first transgender “brand ambassador.”

 

Munroe Bergdorf makes history as the first openly
trans woman to land her own L’Oréal UK campaign
— Mic, Aug. 28

Munroe Bergdorf Opens Up About Being
a Trans Woman in a Beauty Campaign
— W, Aug. 30

Munroe Bergdorf Is The First Transgender
Model To Star In A L’Oréal Campaign
— Nylon, Aug. 31

 

This was P.R. hype, not journalism, and because fashion magazines are publicity agents for their advertisers, Munroe Bergdorf even got a byline in Vogue for an article entitled, “What Makeup Means to Me”:

To be the first trans woman in a L’Oréal Paris UK campaign feels amazing, and also kind of crazy. When I got the email about it I was just sat with my mum and I couldn’t believe it. But I think it’s great – I mean, as women we’re all so varied and L’Oréal are allowing more women to see themselves represented. It can be alienating, to see the same images all of the time and for none of them to relate to you. . . .

Yes, “representation” — which is to say, tokenism and quotas — is all the rage in media nowadays, as if being able to see our own images reflected back to us by TV, movies and advertisements is an inalienable right. This rhetoric fosters a sense of narcissistic entitlement on the part of those who claim that their identities are “marginalized” because they are “underrepresented” in media: “This TV show is oppressing me!”

Hiring a mixed-race transgender “ambassador” like Munroe Bergdorf was the ultimate diversity gesture for L’Oreal, a company that made about $3.7 billion profit from about $150 billion revenue in 2016. How did this cynical “social justice” pandering work out? Not very well:

With a dizzying fanfare, she was brought in as the ‘face of modern diversity’.
But days after she was announced as L’Oreal’s first transgender model, Munroe Bergdorf launched an extraordinary rant declaring all white people racist.
And [Thursday] L’Oreal confirmed the 29-year-old British star, who appeared in its recent ‘#allworthit’ campaign with Cheryl Cole and Katie Piper, has been dropped from her lucrative new role.
In a lengthy Facebook rant, she wrote: ‘Honestly I don’t have energy to talk about the racial violence of white people any more. Yes ALL white people.
‘Because most of ya’ll don’t even realise or refuse to acknowledge that your existence, privilege and success as a race is built on the backs, blood and death of people of colour. Your entire existence is drenched in racism. From micro-aggressions to terrorism, you guys built the blueprint for this s***.
‘Come see me when you realise that racism isn’t learned, it’s inherited and consciously or unconsciously passed down through privilege.
‘Once white people begin to admit that their race is the most violent and oppressive force of nature on Earth… then we can talk.
‘Until then stay acting shocked about how the world continues to stay f***** at the hands of your ancestors and your heads that remain buried in the sand with hands over your ears.’

Never mind that, in condemning white people as “the most violent and oppressive force on nature on Earth,” Bergdorf was denouncing his/“her” own mother (a white woman from a working-class background in northern England) and also the 87% white majority of British people. Also, never mind the white people (whose “entire existence is drenched in racism”) that run L’Oreal and paid Bergdorf as their “ambassador.” Objective facts are irrelevant to the victimhood narratives that sustain the identity politics ideology of 21st-century progressivism.

Munroe Bergdorf’s self-inflicted career destruction might be evidence of mental illness, but at least he/“she” isn’t an axe-wielding maniac:

The triumph of postmodern Third Wave feminist theory — the social construction of the gender binary within the heterosexual matrix, to summarize the key points of Judith Butler’s 1990 book Gender Trouble — has unleashed a tsunami of weirdness, a tidal wave of confusion and conflict.
Consider, for example, the case of Karl Amati, a brilliant young student from Australia who decided as a teenager that he should become a “she,” and traveled to Thailand in 2015 to undergo sex-change surgery.
Ms. Amati, now 24, recently made headlines in Australia, when police say she went on a violent rampage and attacked three people with an axe at a convenience store . . .

Read the whole thing at The Patriarch Tree.

Pardon me for suggesting that the Obergefell ruling was the pivotal event that spawned our current epidemic of social/political insanity. pic.twitter.com/72vB2BlxYo

— The Patriarch Tree (@PatriarchTree) September 1, 2017

* * * * *

Readers can come hear me speak, and get a copy of my book Sex Trouble, next Saturday, Sept. 9, in Leominster, Massachusetts, at an event hosted by Da Tech Guy blog, the Worcester Tea Party and Granite Grok.

Tickets for this buffet luncheon event are available online, and I hope all my friends in the New England area will attend.

If you can’t make it to next week’s luncheon, however, you might want to chip in to the Shoe Leather Fund, because I’ll be spending five days up there and hope to visit Harvard University and other institutes of higher learning in the region, just to see what kind of lunacy the Gender Studies crowd is promulgating on campus this fall. Please remember the Five Most Important Words in the English Language:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

 

 

PREVIOUSLY:

• Aug. 5: The Transgender Victimhood Narrative Encounters Inevitable Difficulties
• Aug. 23: Further Difficulties Emerge for the Transgender Victimhood Narrative
• Aug. 25: Transgender Victimhood Narrative: Police Shoot Knife-Wielding ‘Person’

 

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