Timothy Cootes has a very readable Mercatornet piece on viciously insane squabbling within the fantasy fog that is the Australian Greens trying to cope with trans activism.
The sanguinary daydreams of trans activists
Civility and politesse have taken an extended holiday in discourse about trans issues
I am delighted to inform you that the Australian Greens are in turmoil. For the last few months, various members have been trading verbal blows and bunging around legal threats all because of — come on, what else? — serious accusations of transphobia.
To get you up to speed, City of Melbourne Councillor Rohan Leppert raised some mild concerns about Daniel Andrews’ latest edict on “conversion therapy”. In a closed Facebook group, Leppert wondered if the government’s potential criminalisation of anything less than enthusiastic embrace of transgender affirmation might have unintended or even somewhat deleterious consequences. Of course, his comments leaked and there was some predictable whingeing about the terrors of intraparty debate.
The piece covers ground which is depressingly familiar, but still worth reading as a reminder that modern political activism is a weird mix of lunacy and evil, quite often within the same person.
The Victorian Greens, keen to spook any other dissenters in the ranks, charged Leppert with blasphemy and apologised for the words that undoubtedly caused “deep harm to trans and gender diverse people.”
While in the naughty corner, Leppert has found the company of Linda Gale, whose election as Victorian Greens convenor has just been overturned. By a handy coincidence, some procedural irregularities with the vote were uncovered soon after the re-circulation of a 2019 policy paper in which Gale expressed horribly transphobic views.
Cootes goes on to describe some of the extraordinarily vitriolic attacks within the debate, although we can hardly call it a debate without being guilty of yet more distortion. Yet the whole mess is so demented that we may eventually see a countervailing movement in favour of reality.
There is also a growing parents movement keen to excise all this radical gender theory from the children’s curriculum and return to more traditional learning areas, ones not featuring drag queens, for example.
This conversation, though, is one from which the necessary participants continue to exempt themselves, especially in Australia. As the Greens remind us, entering the debate at this late stage would still cause grievous “harm” to already marginalised people. In fact, they’re so marginalised that their defenders can publicly fantasise about assaulting and killing their interlocutors before they can even get a word in.
Still, one must always tell the truth; it’s the best form of self-defence.
To get you up to speed, City of Melbourne Councillor Rohan Leppert raised some mild concerns about Daniel Andrews’ latest edict on “conversion therapy”. In a closed Facebook group, Leppert wondered if the government’s potential criminalisation of anything less than enthusiastic embrace of transgender affirmation might have unintended or even somewhat deleterious consequences. Of course, his comments leaked and there was some predictable whingeing about the terrors of intraparty debate.
The piece covers ground which is depressingly familiar, but still worth reading as a reminder that modern political activism is a weird mix of lunacy and evil, quite often within the same person.
The Victorian Greens, keen to spook any other dissenters in the ranks, charged Leppert with blasphemy and apologised for the words that undoubtedly caused “deep harm to trans and gender diverse people.”
While in the naughty corner, Leppert has found the company of Linda Gale, whose election as Victorian Greens convenor has just been overturned. By a handy coincidence, some procedural irregularities with the vote were uncovered soon after the re-circulation of a 2019 policy paper in which Gale expressed horribly transphobic views.
Cootes goes on to describe some of the extraordinarily vitriolic attacks within the debate, although we can hardly call it a debate without being guilty of yet more distortion. Yet the whole mess is so demented that we may eventually see a countervailing movement in favour of reality.
There is also a growing parents movement keen to excise all this radical gender theory from the children’s curriculum and return to more traditional learning areas, ones not featuring drag queens, for example.
This conversation, though, is one from which the necessary participants continue to exempt themselves, especially in Australia. As the Greens remind us, entering the debate at this late stage would still cause grievous “harm” to already marginalised people. In fact, they’re so marginalised that their defenders can publicly fantasise about assaulting and killing their interlocutors before they can even get a word in.
Still, one must always tell the truth; it’s the best form of self-defence.
2 comments:
I wonder if there are many people who unquestioningly believe in anthropogenic global warming, who also happen to have very strong views that sex is fixed for life at birth. My guess is that there are very few. But as the two questions are completely separate, there is no logical reason why this should be so.
I think this tells us that politics is mainly an irrational activity of selecting and policing hierarchies and in-groups. And, of course, gaining the power and status that rising within such groups gives people.
I do like the sound of "Victorian Greens", though. Images of chaps in Dundreary whiskers and waistcoats gluing themselves to roads to protest against the damage that hansom cabs do.
Sam - yes it's odd that climate change and gender politics are linked in this way. Both views do seem to reflect allegiances to a hierarchy even if the hierarchy cannot easily be defined by believers.
"I think this tells us that politics is mainly an irrational activity of selecting and policing hierarchies and in-groups"
I'm sure you are right. For example, AGW orthodoxy clearly selects and polices compliant climate scientists. Gender politics orthodoxy seems shakier.
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