Ten Annoying Things

Someone asked me what ten things annoy me most about the current centring of gender identity, and the demand for the codification of gender self-identification, (GSI) which has proved to be the catalyst for a multi-faceted and growing opposition. 

Initially, it was socialist and radical feminists who asked that consideration be given to the implications – for women’s sex-based rights and expectations – of codified gender self-identification, i.e., the legal right to change the sex marker on all official records simply by statutory declaration. 

They were immediately attacked by liberals and some on the left, labelled as TERFs, and deemed to be “Nazi-adjacent”, among a plethora of other insults and threats. 

 

The later coat-tailing of the issues by ultra-conservatives and the political far right was an outcome that could and should have been predicted had the pro-GSI factions not been so busy congratulating themselves on how progressive and on the right side of history they were. 

 

So, here’s my list, written in no particular order of importance, given it’s all inter-connected.

 

1.    The DISTRACTION away from objectively far more important domestic and global issues arising from current states of natural and social disequilibrium, which have the capacity to tip into multi-system chaos far more rapidly than anyone can predict, let alone prevent.

 

2.    The DIVERSION of political energy, and the investment of the left’s dwindling supply of political capital in support for an essentially individualistic, and individualising ideology.

 

3.    The FAILURE to contextualise that essential individualism in corporate capitalism’s on-going aim of neutralising any and all forms of collectivism that might hinder its pursuit of profit at any cost.

 

4.    The SCHISMS that were opened in an already fragmented and weakened “left” within the old empires that created the shit in which the entire planet is suffocating, and whose populations are best placed to stop more from being produced, and to clean up what’s already here.

 

5.    The STUPIDITY of the left in not anticipating the backlash to the attempt to privilege a subjective, often shifting, and individual sense of gendered identity over the material reality of dimorphic biological sex which is cemented into the very foundations of the belief systems and sense of self of most people, across cultures, and all of human social history.

 

6.    The CUPIDITY of the various commercial promoters of gender identity ideology and praxis, most especially those in the medical-industrial complex’s burgeoning realm of medicine for profit, with its absolute subservience to symptomatic and pharmacological/surgical paradigms. 

 

7.    The CYNICISM of the various strata of system managers and coordinators, from politicians to pundits, in promoting an ideology which, if the ultra-conservative and far-right backlash really takes off, will leave swathes of vulnerable people directly in the firing line.

 

8.    The IRRESPONSIBILITY of promoting a movement that claims to be in support of the most at-risk, marginalised, vulnerable of people, but which has the effect of making that population among the most surveilled and medically dependent sector of all.

 

9.    The COWARDICE of all those who had concerns but who sat and watched as principled people, mainly feminists, were subjected to witch-hunts in an attempt to silence them and close down any debate.

 

10. The OPPORTUNISM, retributiveness, and win at any cost mindset of the various right wing coat-tailers of the original gender critical movement.