The Other McCain

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

‘Consciousness-Raising’ as Advertisement

Posted on | March 20, 2018 | 2 Comments

 

The Miami Herald did a story about a would-be transgender teenager who committed suicide at age 17. Rod Dreher examined the ideological issues involved, which prompted this reader comment:

All this consciousness-raising of trans issues functions like an advertisement for a product. . . .
The product we see today, a transformation of body and social identity, promises to fulfill the deep human need of social acceptance and self-satisfaction. Change your “identity” and you too can become a hero! Change your body and you can enter the group with power and no social stigma, you can join the entitled victim class!

Indeed, this is how rapid onset gender dysphoria is being “sold” to the naïve adolescent offspring of clueless parents. However, the same thing is true not only of transgenderism, but of all such ideologies, attitudes, and lifestyles. A complex, confusing and sometimes self-contradictory set of beliefs about “gender” and “sexuality” are being sold as a sort of smörgåsbord of identities from which the teenager is supposed to choose. Anyone who criticizes or opposes this approach is denounced as a bigot, as if expecting kids to behave normally is a hateful prejudice.

What passes unnoticed in this discourse is how the “born that way” ideology of the gay-rights movement has been transformed (as some opponents of the movement predicted) into an argument for encouraging an experimental approach to sexual identity. After all, if homosexuality is an immutable trait, so that some people are destined from birth to be gay, how are young people to know they’re not gay unless they give it a try?

Those who invite teenagers to the sexual identity smörgåsbord, however, do not offer this invitation in a value-neutral manner. No, the purveyors of postmodern gender theory believe that, once they have presented this behavioral buffet to the adolescent identity-consumer, many will choose a deviant identity as a sort of fashion statement, and that those who nevertheless remain heterosexual will do so with a sense of guilt about rejecting the various LGBTQ options. Thus a “straight guilt” complex is being internalized in the minds of young people as they are exposed to endless celebrations of gay pride. If homosexuals have a monopoly on “pride,” doesn’t this rhetoric imply (as its logical obverse) that heterosexuality must be regarded with shame?

Many adults are afraid of being labeled “homophobic” for pointing out how LGBTQ propaganda likely influences vulnerable teenagers. This fear is how the straight-guilt complex silences common sense objections, allowing the propagandists to expand their influence without opposition. If you are a parent worried your child could be a victim of brainwashing by the transgender cult, your concerns will be dismissed as paranoid, because it’s not like there’s an agenda at work, right?

By imposing a sense of shameful silence on their critics — because nobody in 21st-century America wants to be branded a “homophobe” — LGBTQ activists have scored a propaganda triumph. How does this manifest itself in youth culture? One consequence is that many young heterosexuals try to find a place under the LGBTQ rainbow umbrella. They’re basically straight, but are eager to be seen as gay-friendly, so they choose weird identities — “non-binary,” genderqueer,” “pansexual.”

You know who is really annoyed by this trend? Actual gay people.

Lesbians in particular have complained that they are being overrun by trendy wannabes identifying as “bisexual,” “queer,” or even heterosexual males claiming to be “translesbian.” But when the regular dykes complain about these aggresive intruders, they are accused of being “exclusionary” and “transphobic.” You’re a bigot if you don’t want to associate with freaks like Riley Dennis and “Zinnia Jones” (a/k/a “Satana Kennedy,” a/k/a “Lauren McNamara,” a/k/a Zachary Antolak).

Zachary Antolak in 2008 (left); “Zinnia Jones” in 2015 (right).

 

“Riley J. Dennis is a polyamorous, atheist, gender non-binary transwoman . . . educating people on the nuances of gender, sexuality, and intersectional feminism.”
— Everyday Feminism

This propaganda is everywhere nowadays, and even some soi-disant “Christians” are engaged in promoting it. Eric Teetsel of the Family Policy Alliance had to point out the errors involved in such arguments, which should be so obvious as not to need explanation. When popular culture is being inundated with gender-theory propaganda, however, it becomes necessary to explain things that would require no explanation if common sense were actually still common. Alas, it seems, our society is rapidly descending into insanity, which makes life difficult for parents trying to protect their kids from the enveloping madness.

Dreher offers a useful analogy:

Last week in the Czech Republic, the Benda children — all adults now — told me that growing up under communism, their mother and late father taught them every single day about the lies that their school and the state-controlled media proclaimed as true. It was essential to building their internal resistance to the Big Lie that was Communism. Their parents kept them connected to the true and the real. It required constant effort. But it had to be done.
Over and over in Hungary and the Czech Republic, I had to answer questions about political correctness from the curious and mildly horrified people I talked to. They honestly struggled to believe that we Americans were surrendering to it. I told them, by way of explaining how it’s happening, that the media were mainstreaming it by the constant-bordering-on-obsessive sympathetic coverage of transgenderism.

Parents who don’t want their children to be drawn into the gravitational orbit of insanity promoted by the transgender cult must find ways of “building their internal resistance to the Big Lie.”

(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

UPDATE: A comment from Gab: “Parents have to starting thinking like the Amish. Consciously build your family identity as a culture apart.”



 

Category: Sex Trouble, The Transgender Cult

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2 Responses to “‘Consciousness-Raising’ as Advertisement”

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