Parody, 'Science' Identity And Sex

Below dear reader you will see a link to a reasonably major and probably quite significant conversation about transgender identity politics that will likely reverberate beyond its parochial context. The author here is heavily involved in that thread, and when that contribution is taken together, it represents perhaps one of the first really heavy hits to postmodernist sexual identity politics.

Of course this could be entirely a solipsistic vanity, but perhaps not. That will be left to your own forensic judgement.

https://tasmaniantimes.com/2019/03/a-liberal-conscience-vote-on-transgender-law-...

My final comment in that thread, which is quoted below, is a fair attempt at ideological parody, which is perhaps the most effective way to damage the transgender lobby 'brand'.....and the credibility of ideological 'junk bond' minoritarian misere-is-trumps identity politics, that now so blights our entire social politic. Trying to rationally argue with its sales and marketing activists is like slamming the coyote in a Warner Brother 'Road Runner' cartoon. After the laughs are over, the totally squelched creature instantly reflates and off it goes to the next disaster, completely intact and unscathed.

And the reason for that is that in the worlds of sales and marketing, the awful truth doesn't matter. Only perception does. For them, life is a reality cartoon of overdrawn and stripped down mythological fantasy overlays, made up of slogans, stereotypes, cliches, euphemisms and dysphemisms.

Those trying to criticize this lobby are not dealing with scientists or social thinkers, even in the places we are used to expecting them, like universities. Decades of postmodernist schlock has lamentably depleted them and the capacity for critical reason. The ideological sales people, whether academic or corporate, never enter into rational debate. Sales and marketing people never do. These slippery customers only ever deflect, and when that doesn't work, they creatively repackage customer objection and 'negative attitude'. If one does not understand what one is dealing with, they will lead the unsuspecting interlocutor round and round in circles until they get tired, and fall into the simple traps set for the inevitable existential exhaustion and frustration.

The tobacco lobby did that to medical researchers for decades. Ditto for fossil fuel industry climate change denialists. The transgender lobby is exactly the same and works from the same corporate publicrelationsmarketspeak playbook.

The cultural reference you my American audience needs to know, is that the name 'Neddy Seagoon' refers to the famous long running BBC radio comedy series, 'The Goons', where 'Neddy' is the dumb fall guy. (It is by the way, even more than half a century later, extremely funny, at least within the existentially 'edgy and whimsical British tradition of humour.....that 'Yanks' might not 'get', until they realize that their empire too, is declining.)

The political reference is to the controversy generated in the legislature of Australia's small, beautiful and very obscure southern island state, Tasmania, where the transgender lobby is trying to get state legislation through that makes birth certificate sex designation a discretionary option for parents and makes it possible for people to change their sex designation at any time on their own recognisance.

Local feminists have responded with horror to the implications this has for female only protective/privacy infrastructure, gender disadvantage opportunity/affirmative action and women's only sports competition. There are resonance here that are being currently echoed all over the world. And as feminists all over the world are finding, the politics of this are proving much more difficult, profound, consequential, uncomfortable and threatening than any of them imagined when they first came to grips with 'the problem'.



'Ladies and gentlemen....and others....lend me your ears, for I have a tale that will astound and shock you as much as it did me....

How did we get ourselves into a state where a bunch of ideological sales people could run through legislative change to our nature as a species, and seem so plausible that they can change the law to effect this with hardly a whimper?


Let us suppose that you, Neddy Seagoon, feel that your right leg doesn't belong to your body any more. The sight of it causes you intense distress every time you look at it. Ouch!

So he goes to see a surgeon and ask him to chop it off. He politely refuses and suggest that he may need 'help' and that a psychiatrist might be just the ticket. The shrink tells him that he is suffering from 'Body Dysmorphia' and will need several years of 'treatment' that will cost him several tens of thousands of dollars.

Neddy walks away feeling dejected and sensing the beginnings of a massive hole in his wallet, goes to the pub and starts 'crying into his beer'.

But as luck would have it, a rather sexually indeterminate character sidles up to him and tells him that 'she' used to suffer from 'Gender Dysphoria', until some very empathetic and friendly people had given 'her' an unchallengeably and scientifically bullet proof new recognition of 'her' 'Gender Fluidity' and no questions asked, because anyone who does is in trouble if they do...And yes, 'her' hormones and surgery are done and dusted, sex 'changed', and anti rejection parameters enforced, because perception is everything. (The truth/authenticity of this is nothing but the sum of its parts, the truth values that we chose to assign and the 'sex change' brand naming rights that come with them. 'Reality is what WE choose it to mean, no more, no less', as Humpty Dumpty asserted to Alice through the looking glass, as the politics of that assertion passed through it into the world of 'Ordinaryland', and entrenched themselves.)

Neddy is given a card with the name of some people 'who can help him'. It makes him feel a little less upset and disappointed, but that wears off once he gets home. Healing takes time.

Of course they can help him....."Ah Neddy, have we got a plan for you....."

He gets taken down to 'The Perception Resculpting Research and Proving Ground' (PR2PG Inc) for for some identity re-assignment, 'scientific' redesignation and a victimological enhancement workout....

They point out that a single designation all-in-one product like 'Gender Fluidity' is a once in a generation masterpiece, like the 'It's The Real Thing' Coke ad back in the day, but they have something almost as good for the poor fellow...

The identity repackage is....tah dah...'Corporeal Remorphism'. It sounds Latin-medicalish with an 'ism at the end that implies that it is part of an institutionalized and intellectually respectable 'movement'. But it needs to be medically operationalized with a very psychiatrically plausible name (no Latin or Greek unfortunately) but the sort of term they might use....Tah Dah...'Body Image Plasticity'.

You Neddy are now the proud owner of a real ideologico-scientific blast which goes by the uber cool and irresistibly packaged nomenclature of....Tah Dah....'Corporeally Remorphic Body Image Plasticity' or, (even more powertorqued) C-ReBIP. It isn't quite as snappy as 'Things Go Better With Coke', but hey, this is science we are talking about here! The psychiatry peak organizations will cream themselves on that one. We have some willing stooges in there who will run it through faster than a sex change operation.

Neddy's ideologically bullet proof jacket is standard issue we give to everyone. Now that he is 'Corporeally Remorphic Body Image Plasticised' he is a fully fledged, scientifically proven and unassailably legitimate 'identity'. Anyone who gives Neddy 'dissonant' feedback (a reality check) is a 'dissonator' ('ignorant', 'prejudiced' and 'bigoted') who is 'discriminating' (exercising normal critical judgement) against the poor oppressed laddie whose infallibly 'just' recognition demands deserve to be treated 'fairly' (blindly accepted).

You Neddy no longer have a problem. The 'dissonators' have a problem. And if they cast doubt on your new status, any anti discrimination commissioner in the world will be instantly at your service to deal with the first bruto-insensitive fascist who has the temerity to question you.

All Neddy's dreams have come true. The surgeon who refused to initially treat his (repeat constantly after me) Corporeally Remorphic Body Image Plasticity or C-ReBIP (not a 'condition', but 'a poor thing scientifically verifiable state of beingness) is forced to apologize for 'ignorantly discriminating' against him and does the operation for free by way of compensation for 'all the needless hurt' he caused him....and his family.

The psychiatrist offers free family counselling to make amends for causing Neddy's pre C-ReBIP 'rejection difficulties' with his wife, who is still in hospital as a result of the 'trauma' he suffered by being told he had (oh my god) a 'psychiatric condition'.....

Ladies and gentlemen and all the poor pathetic, but now 'empowered' Neddy Seagoon feelalikes in the world. I give you the never before understood or empathized with state of being, that until this moment you knew nothing about, but in reality was always there, ready to be discovered..... Corporeally Remorphic Body Image Plasticity!

C-ReBIP....You can't leave home without it....'