the brilliantly leaping gazelle

There appeared a news item in ‘The Telegraph’ a few days ago which perfectly illustrated not just the incredibly arrogant attitude shared by some transgender activists and the cowardice businesses display when forced to choose between profit or principles. But also the way in which language has become weaponised in pursuit of promoting a narrative which casts transgendered people as heroic refuseniks, constantly fighting for the basic human rights everyone else in society takes for granted.  

‘ ‘Transphobic’ Christmas card pulled from Sainsbury’s

The card was deemed offensive for featuring a cartoon of Dr Seuss’s Grinch character alongside the caption: “This Christmas, I’m identifying as a Grinch.”

The Telegraph understands that the card will be pulled from Sainsbury’s stores across the UK in the coming days amid a backlash from the trans community.’

That ‘backlash from the trans community’ consisted of one person seeing it in they’re local store, taking a photo of the card and then tweeting about it. Thats it. But judging by the responses from the card publisher, its illustrator and Sainsbury’s themselves, you’d think some grievous wrong had been committed and the that only remedy was abject contrition. All the cards were taken off the shelves and the entire stock destroyed. 

Because of one person who imagined it was offensive claiming,  “Trans people don’t choose to identify as their gender – it’s part of who they are. Being trans is not a choice. Cis people saying they identify as something like a tomato, attack helicopter or a Grinch invalidates the lived experience of trans people. It tells the world that they think it’s a choice to be trans, something you can switch in and out of, like playing dress up. This is not true. Being trans or non-binary is not something you can switch off, in the same way a cis person can’t switch off being cis. When you consider the current UK climate of trans hostility, I feel that it’s a worrying sight.”

If that’s what they believe, then good luck to them. But just because because someone believes in something, it doesn’t make that something right. And it also doesn’t mean that their belief takes precedence over fact. Especially not when that something depends on a foundational principle which is a nonsense, which in turn creates a ripple effect of other nonsenses.  Allow me to elaborate.  

Firstly, the very idea of ‘transphobia’ being a phobia is difficult for me to accept. . According to the NHS, ‘a phobia is an overwhelming and debilitating fear of an object, place, situation, feeling or animal.’ Dislike of, annoyance towards or being irritated by people isn’t a phobia; its a normal emotional response. Its one shared by everyone because of being forced to share there existence with everyone else.  

By all means hate someone for characteristics that are unique to them not something that is common within a group; sexual orientation, skin colour or religion, etc. That makes as about as much sense for hating someone for their blood group, their eye colour or for being tall. Hate someone for the way they express their opinions, not because they have that opinion. Hate someone for for deciding that their freedoms negate the freedoms of others, and therefore justify all kinds of wrongs to achieve them.

The transgendered people I really feel sympathy for are the ones quietly getting with living their lives, who are not activists but whose lives are made immeasurably harder by their carryings on.

Secondly, ‘cis people’. When I first encountered the term of ‘cis people’ I was perplexed. Then I googled it, and it all made sense. ‘Cis people’ are everyone basically. Pretty much the entire population of this country, the world and every human who has ever lived. Heterosexuals, in other words. The only people who imagine that ‘cis’ people exist are trans people themselves. 

They created the self-serving nonsense of ‘cis people’ because  it helps them reinforce their delusion that ‘gender identity’ exists, and this in turn allows them to imagine that ‘cis’ people, in stubbornly refusing to accept this, compensate by treating transgender people in all kinds of wrong. Thus they can imagine themselves to be the hero in the fiction they have created.

Thirdly, having a choice and exercising that choice is a core belief of transgenderism, unquestionably so for trans-women. The overwhelming majority of trans-women still have their penises yet still demand to use female only spaces, like toilets and changing rooms. They expect everyone to respect their right to privacy, to be treated with dignity and are not shy about complaining when they feel they haven’t been, but seem unwilling to extend this courtesy to actual women. 

If anything, the Supreme Court ruling back in April that confirmed that legally, women meant biological women, once again, allowed trans-women to imagine themselves to be the heroes in their fiction. Bravely fighting for their right to to break the law by taking the piss out of it. 

IAdditionally, the notion of someone being ‘non-binary’ is a nonsense. Every human who has ever lived was non-binary. It was just so fucking obvious that no-one ever thought it worthy of mention. That it was somehow a defining characteristic or that to deny this was ‘marginalising their lived reality’ was logically incoherent. 

Some men have always exhibited more traditionally male characteristics than others, others more feminine ones. Same with women. Some less traditionally feminine than others, some more so. It’s always been this way and its all perfectly normal. What it isn’t, is special.

Finally, even to describe ‘the current UK climate of trans hostility’ as ‘worrying’ is fatally undermined not just by the fact that all the cards have been destroyed or by the craven apologies this whole farrago had generated. The people who made the card, the people who printed it and the people who sold it, all said different versions of the same thing. Which basically amounted to,”If we say we’re really sorry and beg forgiveness, will you leave us alone?’

No, what really creates ‘worrying’ ‘climate of trans hostility is precisely this kind of opportunistic grandstanding so blatantly performative as to be ridiculously predictable. The transgendered people I really feel sympathy for are the ones quietly getting with living their lives, who are not activists but whose lives are made immeasurably harder by this piffle.  And which also proves the point that it isn’t only the Grinch who wants to steal Christmas.