Why the Truth Doesn't Matter With Trans Activists

Boundaries

It is said that in dysfunctional families everyone caters to making the most toxic, or what I will call for the sake of this article, radical family member happy. It is my observation that you can scale this up to businesses and even entire political parties and governments. Many people have observed that good companies and organizations changed for the worst when an employee with a trans identified child took over, for instance. And as I watch current events unfold I can easily see parallels between how Democrats in America are bending over backwards to appease trans activists and what it is like to live with someone with OCD, something that many trans identified people have. And I think that by highlighting some parallels important things become clear.

An incident in Illinois where there is a report that middle school girls were forced by school officials to change in front of a trans identified male is a good example of what I am talking about. Incidents like this and the Wi Spa incident interest me because before my sister went deep into the trans cult, she was very involved in Me Too and informed consent for sexual activity. And she was not alone among progressives to embrace these movements all while chanting “they just want to pee.”

My sister was dictatorial and rigid about informed consent and believe all women (and men, really, anyone who claims to have been sexually abused). Even my mother, who was a survivor of rape, thought she was too extreme here. Unlike my sister, I had actually worked with people who had been sexually assaulted, and I had also seen cases that were so improbable or where the memories were recovered under shady circumstances such as hypnosis that I knew that life was a lot more complex than automatically believe every outcry. I do want to clarify, the number of credible and/or verified sexual assaults greatly outnumbered false outcries and I strongly believe that we need to do more to prevent sexual assault and support survivors. At the same time I had the foresight to see that if we pillory people who later turn out to be innocent then we’re shooting our cause in foot in the long term for short term gain and my sister’s rigid approach of believe every outcry without question worried me. Once when an actor who my family admired was accused of sexual assault I tried to shift my sister to a more moderate stance of waiting for more information before canceling him but she remained steadfast and obnoxiously sanctimonious, claiming that perhaps someone would see her on social media believing all victims and would disclose being sexually assaulted to her. Needless to say, the actor in question was later cleared of wrongdoing.

So when the Wi Spa incident happened I was horrified to read the comments from trans activists and allies blaming and scapegoating the victims. After years of seeing these people dogmatically shout “believe all women!” and seeing them cancel and attack people even when the allegations were not credible, the way people in the trans cult attacked the survivors of the Wi Spa incident was disgusting and the hypocrisy was stunning. For those of you who don’t remember, in the Wi Spa incident a man who said he was a woman went into the women’s changing rooms and exposed his penis to several women and a child, making them uncomfortable. There were protests, with trans activists gaslighting the women who made the outcry saying horrifically ugly things like they should not have looked at his genitals and accusing them of being the perverts for staring at him. When it was later revealed that the flasher was a convicted sex offender, the trans activists got strangely silent.

Once again trans activists are rallying around the trans identified male in the Deerfield School District incident, claiming that he is being scapegoated and that the trans community is being unfairly targeted. Granted, this story is still developing and we do not know all of the facts yet but what I want to highlight is this hypocritical double standard that you see among progressives here. Basically the message I receive is “believe all women, unless the perpetrator is trans identified, then the women are transphobic liars.”

It becomes obvious to those of us on the outside how the overly simplistic rules completely fail at capturing the moral ambiguities of the real world here. But what I want to highlight is how whether people like my sister are screaming “believe all women” or “women are transphobic liars” the focus on determining who is right and who is wrong is not done by looking at the facts that we can determine about the incident, it is about a person’s immutable characteristics. If someone is a women accusing a man of rape then there is no way she is lying, unless the woman is white and the man is black or the woman is cis and the individual trans identified, then she is either racist or transphobic.

While I am very familiar with the arguments progressives will make to argue these points, to people outside of the bubble this is such a ridiculous way of determining whether or not someone is innocent or guilty it is incredible that anyone believes it. That’s not the point though. The point is that right and wrong do not matter. Catering to and appeasing the trans activists is what matters. This is the maddening reality that we are up against whether we are in a family with someone who is trans identified, have a co-worker with a trans identified child, or are watching in horror as our political party bends over backwards for an illogical, radical group of people.

Whether the radical has claimed a trans identity, is making a false rape outcry or is accusing a group of people in Salem of witchcraft in 1699, the truth does not matter and arguing about truth will get you nowhere with radicals and people who are committed to appeasing them. The person is radical because they are not wanting to manage their own anxiety and distress about life and they are outsourcing that to others. When others bend over backwards to appease them they are considered good. When others stand up to them they are considered bad. This is why the rules are rigid, contradictory, and why they don’t make sense.

As someone who grew up with a mother with OCD, what strikes me most when I look back on what life was like when I was growing up is the confusion I felt over why my mom was angry at me. Somehow everything was my fault but I could never figure out what I was doing wrong. As an adult I see now that my mother was not managing her anxiety and that I was the emotional garbage can and the recipient of the double binds and double standards. But at the time I was confused and desperate. I tried really hard to be good and not upset her. I was known as a goody two shoes, a Hermione Granger type, I never got in trouble at school. But somehow I was never quite right for her and I was doing something wrong.

One incident I recall was towards the end of my senior year of high school. My mom was mad that I had decided to move away for college rather than stay at home for reasons that will soon be apparent. She refused to manage her anxiety around a child growing up and leaving home and instead did everything she could to undermine my confidence in myself hoping I would change my mind. When I was trying to find a summer job she connected me with someone she knew who had a position available but then told me whatever I did, don’t schedule the interview for this day and time because we were sharing a car and she had a work meeting. I made the phone call with my mom hovering over and scowling at me, and of course the time the interviewer wanted to schedule was for the day and time my mom told me not to schedule it during. I choked and panicked and said I couldn’t make it work. The interviewer ended the call and my mom tore into me.

My dad had been in the room the whole time, watching silently. At one point my mom stalked out and my dad said something along the lines of how my mom had given me mixed messages. I seized on it and as soon as I did he told me to be quiet and keep her happy. Right and wrong didn’t matter. Keeping my mom happy did. But how was I supposed to do that? If I said I had a scheduling conflict I would anger my mom by losing the job interview. If I took the time offered I would inconvenience and anger her by making her reschedule her work meeting. And the long, yelling session where my mom told me all the reasons why I would fail if I tried to move out did nothing to teach me how to handle a situation like this well. My mother could have taken this as a learning opportunity. Sometimes you have legitimate conflicts with the time and interviewer offers. How do you handle this when it comes up? All it taught me was to bend over backwards to not be an inconvenience to others and it has led to me being taken advantage of. In my forties I am starting to learn to assert myself more and that people actually can and do respond respectfully when I do, and that those are people I need in my life.

The thing is, it isn’t just bad for others in the family system, company, political party or country when the people in a system cater to the radical. What the radical person is blind to is how by being appeased they aren’t really being helped. They are actually giving away their power and reinforcing their belief that they are incapable of managing their emotions on their own. And tragically what happens is that they start to feel worse because they aren’t addressing the root cause of their problem. But rather than looking inward they continue to look outward and it becomes harder and harder to appease them.

For instance, I have friend from college I have kept up with through Facebook. She has never been able to hold down a job and has a lot of excuses as to why. Her husband makes good money, six figures (we live in a red state where the cost of living is manageable and plenty of people do well with far less). They are shockingly open about their financial situation and he makes more than my husband and I combined. Yet they have mismanaged their affairs so badly that a few years ago they started doing constant GoFundMes or making pleas on Facebook for money. It is shocking to me how open they are about their bad spending habits, bragging about expensive useless crap that they buy while being unable to pay their rent yet someone is always there to bail them out. It’s probably not too surprising then that they are huge Bernie supporters and blame capitalism for their situation. And enough people swallow this that they have managed to scrape by because people keep bailing them out. Still, the chickens are coming home to roost, and they are about to lose their house. My friend got drunk and just blasted people on Facebook for not helping “poor” people like her. People who for the past three years had been bailing her out just got publicly blamed and shamed in return for all their generosity.

This is what happens when we bend over backwards to enable someone rather than help them. Whether it’s on the government level, the company level or the friend and family level, you’re going to get burned. The facts won’t matter. For my friend, it doesn’t matter that plenty of people make it work in a capitalist system with less money than she has. What matters is that people are getting tired of saving her from herself, and the meltdown is epic.

One of the hardest things that people who get into a relationship with someone with OCD or some other severe form of mental illness have to accept is that it isn’t about right or wrong. For someone who isn’t managing their anxiety, dysphoria or insecurities, right or wrong isn’t about the facts, it’s about whether or not someone is bending over backwards to appease them. And the more painful thing to accept is that those committed to enabling them aren’t concerned with the facts either. They are committed to keeping the radical happy.

Upscaling this to the world, trans activists are my mom. It is not about right or wrong, facts don’t matter. What matters is whether or not the world is bending over to make them happy. That they aren’t actually getting better mentally is irrelevant. That people are being harmed is also irrelevant. Keeping them appeased is what matters. But eventually there is a reckoning to be had and a price to be paid, as we are learning the hard way.

Here’s the thing. I stood my ground with my mom and I moved out. And once she had to confront her fears and anxieties around me moving out and once I showed I was more capable than she feared I was she came around. Our relationship improved for awhile. Sometimes the best thing you can do is let someone face those anxieties and fears head on.

So on that note, congrats to my sisters across the pond for your hard work and bravery in getting women legally recognized as biological! Yes, the trans activists and their allies are going to throw a tantrum. Let them face their fears and anxieties as the rest of us heal from the damage done by years of coddling and enabling this group as we move forward to learn, set and maintain the boundaries that need to be set and maintained, and work to ensure this does not happen again!