I tried to get the author the change "leftist" for something a bit more differentiated -- I can't mandate that my authors use "Successorist" here -- but he insisted on leftist and made a cogent case and it is his piece and so I left it the way it was. There are some difficulties with the term and I'd like for there to be a better one (since transgenderism is also driven by techno-capitalist philanthropy and is the apotheosis of consumerist medicine,) but that we have a "Brahmin Left" that represents the better educated and wealthier parts of society is also not in dispute so these paradoxes are simply a part of the enormous baggage of the term without making it wrong as a descriptor.
I think leftist privilege is a big problem in the culture, and buffers the left from due criticism. The left did this. No one else did. It's a stunning turn, a collapse – that they've got parents looking at their daughters and seeing a boy, looking at their sons and seeing a girl, has to be the end of the line for this ideology. Something is very wrong, something we don't understand. The willingness to believe something like that about human nature, and to believe it without preamble, without any process of scientific discovery, is something that merits massive scientific attention. But we don't have the scientific community we need to do the research and generate the hypotheses.
Why not? Because of the left.
We need better terms, but I won't use Orwellian, question-begging terms like "progressive" – non-leftists would not grant that leftist ideology is conducive to or represents progress. And there's nothing liberal about censorship, forced injection of brand new pharma, indoctrinating everyone's kids in their cult, warmongering, increasing crime, etc.
I realize that some of the strongest voices of reason across the pond are leftists (or were), but that doesn't change the fact that this came from the left. That needs to be owned. Conservatives are mostly reasonable human defaults, minding their own business, alarmed by the left, trying to continue having a country. Libertarians were focused on the usual liberty issues, don't have the postmodernist, maniacal core to come up with anything like this.
Leftist ideology is comprehensively false where falsifiable. They've gotten away with pervasive falsity for decades. The academic left got away with indescribably insane, arbitrary, sweeping claims. It's time to hold them to account. They make false claims, fabricate research, rig science. It's no longer coffee shop conjectures subsidized by working, better people. Now they're using scalpels on kids.
As a "lefty" I have nothing in common with these people. Nor, I'm sure, would my old leftish friends. Not the bogus science, not the philosophy and certainly not these actions. Seems both the left and right have been taken over by fringe lunacy. The mind boggles.
"Leftist" is far too broad and does a disservice to an otherwise excellent piece. I would recommend "Idententarian Left" as a more precise substitute that doesn't describe traditional Leftists.
+1. I use 'identity-politics left' as my preferred phrase. Piketty uses (coined?) 'Brahmin left'. W. Yang uses the phrase 'successor ideology' or successorist. None of these terms/phrases appear to been widely adopted. I guess we are going to have to stick with 'woke'.
Thanks. I too try not to use this term unless qualifying that I do not give the "Right" a pass for ignorance either. I also use the term Left because I WAS on the Left, or at least the Woke Left, and I know how I thought then.
Good article about how the science is rigged. However, here in the UK the women who are leading the fight against gender identity ideology are on the left as well as the right and at this point in time it looks like we are winning... though it is going to be a long hard battle to get it out of all the institutions it has infected. This is a nonpartisan struggle. If you look around a little in the US and Canada you will see many women on the left on your side as well. Wrong think happens on both "sides" and in my opinion it's important to recognise this and act accordingly.
Yes, many in the U.S. who are fighting this 'transgender' lunacy are liberal and Liberal and are Democrats (Ds) or former Ds and many are also LGB. And as Helen Joyce, author of 'Trans, When Ideology Meets Reality' has said, the wealthy, heterosexual men, autogynephiles/transvestic fetishists, who are the 'nuclear reactor' of this movement will not take 'No' on this one and esp. not from women. So defeating or containing the 'trans' movement will be a house-to-house slog. And any insufferable gay men who are pushing this disgusting and dangerous ideology are shameful and ought to be horse-whipped---except they would probably enjoy it.
The fight against this pernicious 'trans' movement is being waged by people of all political persuasions and in countries across the Western World b/c the truth and reality does matter in law and in life. And a special 'tip o' the hat' across the pond to TERF Island (and all of Great Britain) and the brave and honorable people there--esp. the women--who have suffered many 'slings and arrows' in the fight for sanity and reality and the rights of women and LGBs.
True enough, but it was the so-called "Left" or those identified as such who started this mishigas and perpetuates it. No one on the "right" is on board or participating.
"Assigned ___ at birth" is language from the medical literature on the rarest DSDs. Queer Theory has turned sex-based congenital conditions. many of which are inimical to life and all of which are inimical to reproduction, into a talisman of "the female penis."
Excellent take down of the pseudo science of Gender. We need to start using Cult awareness - Steve Hassan’s BITE model - to expose the Word Salad and Neurolinguistic programming for what it is.
Plenty of classic liberals see the gender ideology as conservative stereotyping of sex roles. Blaming the “left” for the tip of the horseshoe of extremists is non productive.
This is an astounding survey. Thank you for this Wesley & Jose.
"The assumption that the only difference between men and women are their genitals or hormone profiles. This is a profound denial of reality."
The postmodernist roots of gender ideology are consistently underappreciated. Classical philosophy believes words DESCRIBE reality. Postmodernists believe words DEFINE reality -- essentially a shared delusion. "Transwomen are women" only makes sense under postmodernism. And because postmodernism relies on this "reality is subjective" idea, this phrase must be true or postmodernism falls apart. James Lindsey in Cynical Theories is a great resource on this.
The biggest problem is that a society in which the definition of "man" and "woman" are defined not by objective standards but by those in power, is also a society in which "human" is defined by those in power. Think about that for a moment. Given the power to define "human", you have the power to rule some people "less than human". The 20th century, and the 19th, 18th, 17th, etc... are replete with examples of what happens once you define a portion of your population as "less than human"
This is already happening. Bankrupting and socially ostracizing your political opponent for their views, mobbing their house, hounding their employer... in order to do in those things, you must believe your political opponent is somewhat les than human.
My point is that while the scientific case may be useful in buttressing support, gender ideology is a philosophy not a science, and can thus only be defeated using philosophical tools.
Great and important piece. I would just point out that the hospital you reference repeatedly is generally known as CHLA, not LACH (unless it’s a different hospital, but that seems unlikely). https://www.chla.org/
I decided to identify as a Royal Bengal Tiger for a bit, but that stupid Bull Terrier still chased me up a tree.
Also, since the article prominently features "leftists", try this "I'm a girl because I say i am!" nonsense in the Soviet Union. You and any doctor or educator who went along with the charade would get a one way, all expenses paid vacation to a mental hospital or a forced labor camp.
AFAB/AMAB are just nonsense. Sex is not assigned at birth. Sex is observed. Observations are roughly 99.9% accurate, but not 100.0% accurate. For example, Caster Semenya was born with a vagina and thought (incorrectly) to be female. However, he is a 46,XY male with testes (internal), no ovaries, and no uterus. He has normal levels of Testosterone. In one area in the Dominican Republic, this is actually somewhat common. See “The extraordinary case of the Guevedoces”. The 5-ARD condition is somewhat common in this area. Semenya is also 5-ARD.
I don't think that's exactly true; mutilated children don't seem to be preparing to seize the means of production any time soon. I'd say instead that where they display similarities, it's because Marxism (and its derivatives) and the successor ideology are both subsets of something much older. It's revenge against God for the crime of Being, the attitude of Milton's Satan, or Goethe's Mephistopheles:
This is from Paul Johnson's "Karl Marx: ‘Howling Gigantic Curses’":
"Two poems were published in the Berlin Athenaeum, 23 January 1841. They were entitled ‘Savage Songs’, and savagery is a characteristic note of his verse, together with intense pessimism about the human condition, hatred, a fascination with corruption and violence, suicide pacts and pacts with the devil. ‘We are chained, shattered, empty, frightened/ Eternally chained to this marble block of being,’ wrote the young Marx, ‘…We are the apes of a cold God.’ He has himself, in the person of God, say: ‘I shall howl gigantic curses at mankind,’ and below the surface of much of his poetry is the notion of a general world-crisis building up. He was fond of quoting Mephistopheles’ line from Goethe’s Faust, ‘Everything that exists deserves to perish’...
The Left is rooted in Marx's “ruthless criticism of all that exists” and the proposition that if we only hand them total power to destroy our currently cruel and unjust world, they will lead us to a new egalitarian Promised Land.
In the 19th century the oppressor was the capitalist merchant class who immiserated the working class; in our much richer and safer time (and long after the Revolution moved inside the cozy groves of academe), the oppression is the mammalian sex binary itself, which has placed certain unchosen norms and expectations on an oppressed minority (the "Queer") and thus needs to be razed to usher in a utopia where no one is different, no one is better or worse, and thus no one has feels unsafe or has their ego injured.
For supposed compassionate saviors of humanity, these people sure leave quite a path of destruction in their wake!
Colour me not remotely shocked that Marx wrote in such terms. His attitude to the, ahem, Afro-Hebraic gentleman for whom he famously didn't have much time, with which I assume you're familiar if you have a less-than-hagiographic biography to hand, in light of his own heritage suggests such a disposition.
But I can't bring myself to condemn the left per se on that basis. I can't see Satan's hand at work in the 19th-century trade union campaigns to ban child labour, for example. I'd say the left is by no means entirely demonic (the Left perhaps, but not the left), and demons are by no means entirely of the left.
I agree and always try to remind myself that things like labor and wage laws, unions and Social Security etc were partially enacted by the Left and its campaign for these things—not that this was the full scope of their schemes, and not that any doctrinaire Leftist should be trusted with any power outside the faculty lounge.
Leftism serves a noble purpose when it focuses on the things of this Earth (IS not OUGHT) and in empirical reform to ameliorate suffering—but when their eyes turn to whatever glorious Promised Land they're currently imagining, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat or "Social Justice" or fundamentalist Egalitarianism, that's when they break out the Procrustean bed and all us human eggs get broken in the name of their utopian omelette.
This is a completely ridiculous statement and prompts me to ask, "What's your evidence?" i.e., have you studied either of Marx or Mao? Reductionism on either side needs to be interrogated for its mindless, culty BS.
Equity is the goal of all DEI programs, which is to say that DEI programs exist to force captive audiences of people to achieve “equitable” redistribution of resources, status, and wealth according to neo-Marxist Identity Theories like Critical Race Theory. Equity is an administered political economy in which shares are adjusted so that citizens are made equal, including shares of social and cultural capital. In other words, it’s an expansion of socialism. Mao would smile.
Actually, no nerve at all, Michael. You seem to have entirely missed the intention of my comment and your response confirms this. To lump all Marxist thought in one dismissive comment leads me to assume you have a rather ahistorical, rigid mindset and that you believe there is nothing of value in exploring, with a nuanced and critical mind, philosophical and economic possibilities inherent in socialism or communism. I would never be foolish enough to suggest that the state capitalist countries of Stalin's Russia or Mao's China etc. are models of how to live and move forward for our human species. That would be to ignore history and living reality. I didn't realize Marx or Mao suggested DEI programs or that Identity theories were the sole property of your so-called neo-Marxists. I find broad and dismissive rhetoric from either direction, amounts to the same thing - dehumanizing polarization and a sense of powerlessness. Happy to be proven wrong about anything I've written here. :)
Jul 29, 2023·edited Jul 30, 2023Liked by José Duarte, PhD
"you have a rather ahistorical, rigid mindset and that you believe there is nothing of value in exploring, with a nuanced and critical mind, philosophical and economic possibilities inherent in socialism or communism."
Recommending Communism at this point is like a doctor recommending a treatment that has killed all his prior patients. The onus isn't on the patient but on the doctor to explain: Why does Communism always lead to prison camps and massacres? Why does Communism always sell a sales pitch about freedom and brotherhood only to destroy all civil liberties? Why will any next attempt be different?
"I didn't realize Marx or Mao suggested DEI programs or that Identity theories were the sole property of your so-called neo-Marxists." Times change, programs change, yet the themes remain the same: Leftism is dogmatic, messianic, absolutely intolerant of all dissent, and the program always boils down to: if you give us total power to destroy the currently cruel and unjust world, we will usher in a Utopia, because we've read all the right books and are philosopher-kings blessed with gnostic critical consciousness.
And Identity theories may not be the sole property of the New Left, but Identities are the current sledgehammer being used to "change the world" and the New Left has weaponized every possible identity, hoping to turn children against parents and blacks against whites (amongst others) in the hope that they can seize power after social collapse.
It's always been the same strategy, and now it's sunk to having children mutilate themselves to help smash the "cisheteronormative patriarchy". Various Leftists may not like it and may refuse to accept it, but the Left owns "gender affirmation" as much as it owns dialectical materialism.
Anyone who can apparently with a straight face make reference to "the state capitalist countries of Stalin's Russia or Mao's China" isn't worth the fisking.
What exactly is your point here Tom? Apparently you have no knowledge of the Theory of State Capitalism which was developed to explain the abysmal failure of these countries to establish socialist economies and political governance. Both countries are so completely woven into international capitalism that the neoliberal West cannot function without them and vice versa. What makes that something one can't "make reference to with a straight face"? All human systems are imperfect and are meant to evolve over time as ideas (theory) and practice meet up on the playing field ... historical/dialectical materialism. Apparently the sole purpose of these comments on my comment, is simple to show off a brand of self-righteous cleverness. By now you have no doubt created a narrative about who I am that would be so off the mark as to be laughable ... just to reassure yourselves that you are better than your perceived enemy. You are no more willing to engage in human conversation than the gender cultists you rail against. Enough!
My comment was simply to suggest that sweeping statements that are dismissive without looking at context and the particulars are counterproductive and not a good way to bring people together in a common cause. I am an old lesbian, revolutionary feminist and psychotherapist, and I have spent my life questioning everything because ... Why not? I was a curious child now a curious old woman. I am learning after 72 years, that beliefs of any kind can and should be challenged in an open hearted way. It's a hard practice, but a worthy one. Maybe they still hold up, maybe they don't, but beliefs are not facts and are often fear based. This can lead any of us to throw the baby out with the bath water before looking more carefully beneath the surface. Life is too complex to reduce it to good and evil, right and wrong and to hold oneself/group as the arbiter of which is which. It is so easy for me to shuffle people into either of these bins, especially when I have the 'facts' in hand. I am horrified by transgenderism and its attendant handmaids and will do everything I can, in my small way, to fight back against this well plotted and extremely well funded and organized attempt to divide and conquer us yet again. I have done my homework and am willing to do more by digging deeper and trusting myself. Sorry to ramble away here; just wanting to clarify a little of where I'm coming from and point out how language has become a minefield of cluster bombs which online comment sections such as this, are likely as not, to detonate. The struggle continues.
Jose, have you sent your excellent critique of the gender pseudoscience to the AAA and all affiliated medical bodies, as well as to the heads of these "gender clinics"? Also, please contact mainstream media and see if you can find anyone willing to publish this. A documentary and/or interview that could be widely shared would also be great.
One undergrad marketing research class taken 30 years ago and I throw red flags all over the field on this "survey."
There is a way to structure questions to get the result you want. It's not that difficult. "I have to buy/wear certain clothes because of my chest."Um...100% of us have to do that. Men can't comfortably wear fancy lacy 38DD bras because of their chests. Women have to buy shirts that are large enough across their chests to allow buttoning.
And why are we defaulting to male terminology with re the upper torso? Men have chests, unless we are mocking men without chests. Women have busts, or breasts. Once again, women are being expected to conform to male terminology and not the reverse. Who is asking men to assess their discomfort with their busts or breasts?
There are plenty of scientists roughly "on the Left side" who decry and see the decline of scientific rigor (and adaptation to gender activism) horrifying. But such people (including plenty of scientists) are more likely to be Liberal, than they are to be Progressive. The Progressive lot have "bought" and are either pushing or swallowing the postmodernist garbage, including Gender Theory.. I wish the author had used the term "Progressive" and made it explicit that he was not referring to Liberals, that is, those whose social justice is based on out common humanity, among other things, and contiinue to understand science as the pursuit of facts, and still realize that the biases of the researcher are among those things specifically to exclude from the study or the reading of the results. Yes, I am broadly- speaking a Leftist, but I consider what is going on to be criminal. The reason you rarely hear from Liberal scientists is not because they endorse all this, but because they are afraid -- of losing their livelihoods and being smeared as bigots. What is missing is coordinated courage, not moral fiber. If you want to fight this thing, don't say that the problem is "Leftists" and then suggest anyone on the other side of the fence is lacking integrity and morally bankrupt. We need to find a way to join forces. There are actually more of us who would agree with you than those who wouldn't. The concensus is a false one, the product of a corrupt ideology backed by rich "idealists". And the Liberals have just been bullied into silence.
Lets add it to the list of bad science and then confront the Absurd by acknowledging we have all become desensitized and stupid from over exposure and coverage of this issue. Not worth subscribing to, recommended books do just fine without an echo chamber of stifling thought.
Would consider participating with appropriate compensation. This isn’t a charity, and I don’t have to consider the children in determining my personal decisions.
I tried to get the author the change "leftist" for something a bit more differentiated -- I can't mandate that my authors use "Successorist" here -- but he insisted on leftist and made a cogent case and it is his piece and so I left it the way it was. There are some difficulties with the term and I'd like for there to be a better one (since transgenderism is also driven by techno-capitalist philanthropy and is the apotheosis of consumerist medicine,) but that we have a "Brahmin Left" that represents the better educated and wealthier parts of society is also not in dispute so these paradoxes are simply a part of the enormous baggage of the term without making it wrong as a descriptor.
I think leftist privilege is a big problem in the culture, and buffers the left from due criticism. The left did this. No one else did. It's a stunning turn, a collapse – that they've got parents looking at their daughters and seeing a boy, looking at their sons and seeing a girl, has to be the end of the line for this ideology. Something is very wrong, something we don't understand. The willingness to believe something like that about human nature, and to believe it without preamble, without any process of scientific discovery, is something that merits massive scientific attention. But we don't have the scientific community we need to do the research and generate the hypotheses.
Why not? Because of the left.
We need better terms, but I won't use Orwellian, question-begging terms like "progressive" – non-leftists would not grant that leftist ideology is conducive to or represents progress. And there's nothing liberal about censorship, forced injection of brand new pharma, indoctrinating everyone's kids in their cult, warmongering, increasing crime, etc.
I realize that some of the strongest voices of reason across the pond are leftists (or were), but that doesn't change the fact that this came from the left. That needs to be owned. Conservatives are mostly reasonable human defaults, minding their own business, alarmed by the left, trying to continue having a country. Libertarians were focused on the usual liberty issues, don't have the postmodernist, maniacal core to come up with anything like this.
Leftist ideology is comprehensively false where falsifiable. They've gotten away with pervasive falsity for decades. The academic left got away with indescribably insane, arbitrary, sweeping claims. It's time to hold them to account. They make false claims, fabricate research, rig science. It's no longer coffee shop conjectures subsidized by working, better people. Now they're using scalpels on kids.
As a "lefty" I have nothing in common with these people. Nor, I'm sure, would my old leftish friends. Not the bogus science, not the philosophy and certainly not these actions. Seems both the left and right have been taken over by fringe lunacy. The mind boggles.
"Leftist" is far too broad and does a disservice to an otherwise excellent piece. I would recommend "Idententarian Left" as a more precise substitute that doesn't describe traditional Leftists.
Yes that's what my first edits did. It's a clunky phrase, though.
+1. I use 'identity-politics left' as my preferred phrase. Piketty uses (coined?) 'Brahmin left'. W. Yang uses the phrase 'successor ideology' or successorist. None of these terms/phrases appear to been widely adopted. I guess we are going to have to stick with 'woke'.
Thanks. I too try not to use this term unless qualifying that I do not give the "Right" a pass for ignorance either. I also use the term Left because I WAS on the Left, or at least the Woke Left, and I know how I thought then.
I think you did the right thing by not insisting on the change. I agree with his views and your caveats, and as you say, it's his piece.
Good article about how the science is rigged. However, here in the UK the women who are leading the fight against gender identity ideology are on the left as well as the right and at this point in time it looks like we are winning... though it is going to be a long hard battle to get it out of all the institutions it has infected. This is a nonpartisan struggle. If you look around a little in the US and Canada you will see many women on the left on your side as well. Wrong think happens on both "sides" and in my opinion it's important to recognise this and act accordingly.
Yes, many in the U.S. who are fighting this 'transgender' lunacy are liberal and Liberal and are Democrats (Ds) or former Ds and many are also LGB. And as Helen Joyce, author of 'Trans, When Ideology Meets Reality' has said, the wealthy, heterosexual men, autogynephiles/transvestic fetishists, who are the 'nuclear reactor' of this movement will not take 'No' on this one and esp. not from women. So defeating or containing the 'trans' movement will be a house-to-house slog. And any insufferable gay men who are pushing this disgusting and dangerous ideology are shameful and ought to be horse-whipped---except they would probably enjoy it.
The fight against this pernicious 'trans' movement is being waged by people of all political persuasions and in countries across the Western World b/c the truth and reality does matter in law and in life. And a special 'tip o' the hat' across the pond to TERF Island (and all of Great Britain) and the brave and honorable people there--esp. the women--who have suffered many 'slings and arrows' in the fight for sanity and reality and the rights of women and LGBs.
True enough, but it was the so-called "Left" or those identified as such who started this mishigas and perpetuates it. No one on the "right" is on board or participating.
"If you look around a little in the US and Canada you will see many women on the left on your side as well"
Canada has Megan Murphy (who I know a very, very tiny bit). Not sure who the US has (I am an American, not a Canadian).
"Assigned ___ at birth" is language from the medical literature on the rarest DSDs. Queer Theory has turned sex-based congenital conditions. many of which are inimical to life and all of which are inimical to reproduction, into a talisman of "the female penis."
Excellent take down of the pseudo science of Gender. We need to start using Cult awareness - Steve Hassan’s BITE model - to expose the Word Salad and Neurolinguistic programming for what it is.
Plenty of classic liberals see the gender ideology as conservative stereotyping of sex roles. Blaming the “left” for the tip of the horseshoe of extremists is non productive.
This is an astounding survey. Thank you for this Wesley & Jose.
"The assumption that the only difference between men and women are their genitals or hormone profiles. This is a profound denial of reality."
The postmodernist roots of gender ideology are consistently underappreciated. Classical philosophy believes words DESCRIBE reality. Postmodernists believe words DEFINE reality -- essentially a shared delusion. "Transwomen are women" only makes sense under postmodernism. And because postmodernism relies on this "reality is subjective" idea, this phrase must be true or postmodernism falls apart. James Lindsey in Cynical Theories is a great resource on this.
The biggest problem is that a society in which the definition of "man" and "woman" are defined not by objective standards but by those in power, is also a society in which "human" is defined by those in power. Think about that for a moment. Given the power to define "human", you have the power to rule some people "less than human". The 20th century, and the 19th, 18th, 17th, etc... are replete with examples of what happens once you define a portion of your population as "less than human"
This is already happening. Bankrupting and socially ostracizing your political opponent for their views, mobbing their house, hounding their employer... in order to do in those things, you must believe your political opponent is somewhat les than human.
My point is that while the scientific case may be useful in buttressing support, gender ideology is a philosophy not a science, and can thus only be defeated using philosophical tools.
Great and important piece. I would just point out that the hospital you reference repeatedly is generally known as CHLA, not LACH (unless it’s a different hospital, but that seems unlikely). https://www.chla.org/
Thanks I changed it.
Also there’s a world missing in the second-last paragraph: “... on the basis of utterly .”
I've edited it
A whole world is missing, Wesley Make sure you find it.
Sorry, mom, but I couldn't resist. :-)
And that’s why I shouldn’t type comments on my phone. :-)
This guy says things that actually make sense. How did he ever get onto, never mind through, a PhD programme?
I decided to identify as a Royal Bengal Tiger for a bit, but that stupid Bull Terrier still chased me up a tree.
Also, since the article prominently features "leftists", try this "I'm a girl because I say i am!" nonsense in the Soviet Union. You and any doctor or educator who went along with the charade would get a one way, all expenses paid vacation to a mental hospital or a forced labor camp.
This was a brilliant piece.
AFAB/AMAB are just nonsense. Sex is not assigned at birth. Sex is observed. Observations are roughly 99.9% accurate, but not 100.0% accurate. For example, Caster Semenya was born with a vagina and thought (incorrectly) to be female. However, he is a 46,XY male with testes (internal), no ovaries, and no uterus. He has normal levels of Testosterone. In one area in the Dominican Republic, this is actually somewhat common. See “The extraordinary case of the Guevedoces”. The 5-ARD condition is somewhat common in this area. Semenya is also 5-ARD.
An exceptional piece not only from a scientific point of view and because of the information it brings, but also because it is so well written.
Gender ideology is a subset of Marxist and Maoist thought.
I don't think that's exactly true; mutilated children don't seem to be preparing to seize the means of production any time soon. I'd say instead that where they display similarities, it's because Marxism (and its derivatives) and the successor ideology are both subsets of something much older. It's revenge against God for the crime of Being, the attitude of Milton's Satan, or Goethe's Mephistopheles:
"I am the spirit that negates.
And rightly so, for all that comes to be
Deserves to perish wretchedly;
‘Twere better nothing would begin.
Thus everything that your terms, sin,
Destruction, evil represent—
That is my proper element."
YES!
This is from Paul Johnson's "Karl Marx: ‘Howling Gigantic Curses’":
"Two poems were published in the Berlin Athenaeum, 23 January 1841. They were entitled ‘Savage Songs’, and savagery is a characteristic note of his verse, together with intense pessimism about the human condition, hatred, a fascination with corruption and violence, suicide pacts and pacts with the devil. ‘We are chained, shattered, empty, frightened/ Eternally chained to this marble block of being,’ wrote the young Marx, ‘…We are the apes of a cold God.’ He has himself, in the person of God, say: ‘I shall howl gigantic curses at mankind,’ and below the surface of much of his poetry is the notion of a general world-crisis building up. He was fond of quoting Mephistopheles’ line from Goethe’s Faust, ‘Everything that exists deserves to perish’...
The Left is rooted in Marx's “ruthless criticism of all that exists” and the proposition that if we only hand them total power to destroy our currently cruel and unjust world, they will lead us to a new egalitarian Promised Land.
In the 19th century the oppressor was the capitalist merchant class who immiserated the working class; in our much richer and safer time (and long after the Revolution moved inside the cozy groves of academe), the oppression is the mammalian sex binary itself, which has placed certain unchosen norms and expectations on an oppressed minority (the "Queer") and thus needs to be razed to usher in a utopia where no one is different, no one is better or worse, and thus no one has feels unsafe or has their ego injured.
For supposed compassionate saviors of humanity, these people sure leave quite a path of destruction in their wake!
Colour me not remotely shocked that Marx wrote in such terms. His attitude to the, ahem, Afro-Hebraic gentleman for whom he famously didn't have much time, with which I assume you're familiar if you have a less-than-hagiographic biography to hand, in light of his own heritage suggests such a disposition.
But I can't bring myself to condemn the left per se on that basis. I can't see Satan's hand at work in the 19th-century trade union campaigns to ban child labour, for example. I'd say the left is by no means entirely demonic (the Left perhaps, but not the left), and demons are by no means entirely of the left.
I agree and always try to remind myself that things like labor and wage laws, unions and Social Security etc were partially enacted by the Left and its campaign for these things—not that this was the full scope of their schemes, and not that any doctrinaire Leftist should be trusted with any power outside the faculty lounge.
Leftism serves a noble purpose when it focuses on the things of this Earth (IS not OUGHT) and in empirical reform to ameliorate suffering—but when their eyes turn to whatever glorious Promised Land they're currently imagining, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat or "Social Justice" or fundamentalist Egalitarianism, that's when they break out the Procrustean bed and all us human eggs get broken in the name of their utopian omelette.
This is a completely ridiculous statement and prompts me to ask, "What's your evidence?" i.e., have you studied either of Marx or Mao? Reductionism on either side needs to be interrogated for its mindless, culty BS.
Hmmm, I seemed to have hit a raw nerve, Georgina.
Equity is the goal of all DEI programs, which is to say that DEI programs exist to force captive audiences of people to achieve “equitable” redistribution of resources, status, and wealth according to neo-Marxist Identity Theories like Critical Race Theory. Equity is an administered political economy in which shares are adjusted so that citizens are made equal, including shares of social and cultural capital. In other words, it’s an expansion of socialism. Mao would smile.
Actually, no nerve at all, Michael. You seem to have entirely missed the intention of my comment and your response confirms this. To lump all Marxist thought in one dismissive comment leads me to assume you have a rather ahistorical, rigid mindset and that you believe there is nothing of value in exploring, with a nuanced and critical mind, philosophical and economic possibilities inherent in socialism or communism. I would never be foolish enough to suggest that the state capitalist countries of Stalin's Russia or Mao's China etc. are models of how to live and move forward for our human species. That would be to ignore history and living reality. I didn't realize Marx or Mao suggested DEI programs or that Identity theories were the sole property of your so-called neo-Marxists. I find broad and dismissive rhetoric from either direction, amounts to the same thing - dehumanizing polarization and a sense of powerlessness. Happy to be proven wrong about anything I've written here. :)
"you have a rather ahistorical, rigid mindset and that you believe there is nothing of value in exploring, with a nuanced and critical mind, philosophical and economic possibilities inherent in socialism or communism."
Recommending Communism at this point is like a doctor recommending a treatment that has killed all his prior patients. The onus isn't on the patient but on the doctor to explain: Why does Communism always lead to prison camps and massacres? Why does Communism always sell a sales pitch about freedom and brotherhood only to destroy all civil liberties? Why will any next attempt be different?
"I didn't realize Marx or Mao suggested DEI programs or that Identity theories were the sole property of your so-called neo-Marxists." Times change, programs change, yet the themes remain the same: Leftism is dogmatic, messianic, absolutely intolerant of all dissent, and the program always boils down to: if you give us total power to destroy the currently cruel and unjust world, we will usher in a Utopia, because we've read all the right books and are philosopher-kings blessed with gnostic critical consciousness.
And Identity theories may not be the sole property of the New Left, but Identities are the current sledgehammer being used to "change the world" and the New Left has weaponized every possible identity, hoping to turn children against parents and blacks against whites (amongst others) in the hope that they can seize power after social collapse.
It's always been the same strategy, and now it's sunk to having children mutilate themselves to help smash the "cisheteronormative patriarchy". Various Leftists may not like it and may refuse to accept it, but the Left owns "gender affirmation" as much as it owns dialectical materialism.
Anyone who can apparently with a straight face make reference to "the state capitalist countries of Stalin's Russia or Mao's China" isn't worth the fisking.
lol good catch!
What exactly is your point here Tom? Apparently you have no knowledge of the Theory of State Capitalism which was developed to explain the abysmal failure of these countries to establish socialist economies and political governance. Both countries are so completely woven into international capitalism that the neoliberal West cannot function without them and vice versa. What makes that something one can't "make reference to with a straight face"? All human systems are imperfect and are meant to evolve over time as ideas (theory) and practice meet up on the playing field ... historical/dialectical materialism. Apparently the sole purpose of these comments on my comment, is simple to show off a brand of self-righteous cleverness. By now you have no doubt created a narrative about who I am that would be so off the mark as to be laughable ... just to reassure yourselves that you are better than your perceived enemy. You are no more willing to engage in human conversation than the gender cultists you rail against. Enough!
You seem to be saying that real communism aka socialism has never been tried.
And I stand by my "dismissive" comment. I'll give you the last word.
My comment was simply to suggest that sweeping statements that are dismissive without looking at context and the particulars are counterproductive and not a good way to bring people together in a common cause. I am an old lesbian, revolutionary feminist and psychotherapist, and I have spent my life questioning everything because ... Why not? I was a curious child now a curious old woman. I am learning after 72 years, that beliefs of any kind can and should be challenged in an open hearted way. It's a hard practice, but a worthy one. Maybe they still hold up, maybe they don't, but beliefs are not facts and are often fear based. This can lead any of us to throw the baby out with the bath water before looking more carefully beneath the surface. Life is too complex to reduce it to good and evil, right and wrong and to hold oneself/group as the arbiter of which is which. It is so easy for me to shuffle people into either of these bins, especially when I have the 'facts' in hand. I am horrified by transgenderism and its attendant handmaids and will do everything I can, in my small way, to fight back against this well plotted and extremely well funded and organized attempt to divide and conquer us yet again. I have done my homework and am willing to do more by digging deeper and trusting myself. Sorry to ramble away here; just wanting to clarify a little of where I'm coming from and point out how language has become a minefield of cluster bombs which online comment sections such as this, are likely as not, to detonate. The struggle continues.
Jose, have you sent your excellent critique of the gender pseudoscience to the AAA and all affiliated medical bodies, as well as to the heads of these "gender clinics"? Also, please contact mainstream media and see if you can find anyone willing to publish this. A documentary and/or interview that could be widely shared would also be great.
One undergrad marketing research class taken 30 years ago and I throw red flags all over the field on this "survey."
There is a way to structure questions to get the result you want. It's not that difficult. "I have to buy/wear certain clothes because of my chest."Um...100% of us have to do that. Men can't comfortably wear fancy lacy 38DD bras because of their chests. Women have to buy shirts that are large enough across their chests to allow buttoning.
And why are we defaulting to male terminology with re the upper torso? Men have chests, unless we are mocking men without chests. Women have busts, or breasts. Once again, women are being expected to conform to male terminology and not the reverse. Who is asking men to assess their discomfort with their busts or breasts?
There are plenty of scientists roughly "on the Left side" who decry and see the decline of scientific rigor (and adaptation to gender activism) horrifying. But such people (including plenty of scientists) are more likely to be Liberal, than they are to be Progressive. The Progressive lot have "bought" and are either pushing or swallowing the postmodernist garbage, including Gender Theory.. I wish the author had used the term "Progressive" and made it explicit that he was not referring to Liberals, that is, those whose social justice is based on out common humanity, among other things, and contiinue to understand science as the pursuit of facts, and still realize that the biases of the researcher are among those things specifically to exclude from the study or the reading of the results. Yes, I am broadly- speaking a Leftist, but I consider what is going on to be criminal. The reason you rarely hear from Liberal scientists is not because they endorse all this, but because they are afraid -- of losing their livelihoods and being smeared as bigots. What is missing is coordinated courage, not moral fiber. If you want to fight this thing, don't say that the problem is "Leftists" and then suggest anyone on the other side of the fence is lacking integrity and morally bankrupt. We need to find a way to join forces. There are actually more of us who would agree with you than those who wouldn't. The concensus is a false one, the product of a corrupt ideology backed by rich "idealists". And the Liberals have just been bullied into silence.
Lets add it to the list of bad science and then confront the Absurd by acknowledging we have all become desensitized and stupid from over exposure and coverage of this issue. Not worth subscribing to, recommended books do just fine without an echo chamber of stifling thought.
Would consider participating with appropriate compensation. This isn’t a charity, and I don’t have to consider the children in determining my personal decisions.