In 2001 in the United Kingdom, an individual named Karen White saw the inside of a prison cell for child abuse. Then, in 2003, Karen White raped a woman. Then in 2016, White raped two more women.
Her Majesty’s Prison Service thought that the best place to Karen White, while the rape trial was pending, would be a women’s prison — there White assaulted female inmates. The prosecutor explained, “Her penis was erect and sticking out of the top of her trousers.”
“Her penis”? Strange — “women don’t have penises” — many might think, just as a student at Durham University did when he tweeted that exact phrase. But because of transgender orthodoxy, this is no longer a reasonable thought to share. He learned the hard way:
Less than a month after sending that tweet, I had lost my position as president-elect of Humanist Students as well as my role as assistant editor of Durham University’s philosophy society’s undergraduate journal, Critique. I was also given the boot as co-editor-in-chief of Durham University’s online student magazine, the Bubble. All for saying something that many people would surely agree with.
Now perhaps he might have included some tactful qualifications. For instance, he might also have tweeted something like:
Gender dysphoria is a medically and morally complicated condition, and it is decent to treat such people with compassion and tact.
Or:
Some adults with gender dysphoria may prefer a transgender identity or surgery and — though they should be provided with all the available information — this decision is ultimately the (adult) patient’s prerogative.
But I wager that it would not have made the slightest bit of difference. The student’s crime was stating the obvious; those who do so with nuance seldom fare better. You see, when it comes to transgender doctrine, the options available are an ebullient celebration or total silence. Everything else is “hate speech.”
Think I exaggerate? What else could explain why British MPs were not allowed to debate the issues raised by Karen White’s case. As James Kirkup over at The Spectator writes:
To recap: the State put a rapist in a jail full of vulnerable women. That rapist then sexually assaulted four of those women. MPs wanted to know how that happened, and to question the ministers responsible for those events. The Speaker of the House of Commons said they could not do so.
Besides, I’m not convinced that the activists — who oftentimes do not themselves have gender dysphoria or a trans identity — really represent the interests of the wider transgender community.
For instance, one “male to female who has a lived as a transwoman for 40 years” told National Review that she is frustrated with the activism and considers it deeply harmful. Activists have made transgenderism a fashion statement, she says, one backed by overreaching political force which makes for bad medicine.
(For what it’s worth — using preferred pronouns can be a harmless courtesy. But not when, as others have pointed out, it is part of ideological policing/linguistic rewriting. As with, for example, the attempt to change the term breastfeeding to “chest feeding.”)
In any case, the case of the transgender rapist is merely another example of just how out of hand the situation is getting. Especially for women, girls, and minors.
In the U.K., for example, the girl guides revealed that they will allow boys who identify as girls to shower with girls — apparently in compliance with the Equality Act 2010.
Meanwhile, in the U.S. a parent told National Review about a policy at her daughter’s school which allowed her daughter to sleep with the boys on a school field trip without her or her husband’s permission.
Then, last week the American Academy of Pediatrics’ released a pro-transitioning policy with seriously worrying implications for child welfare.
Moderates used to shrug off the transgender debate as taking up too much airtime. Let’s live and let live and leave well enough alone! Which, by all accounts, was a very sensible approach given that gender dysphoria is both incredibly rare and complicated.
But live and let live and leave well enough alone! is a two-way street. And given that we are now seeing an onslaught of militant activism, a rapid increase in gender dysphoria in youth, widespread “social contagion” (among teenage girls especially), the politicization of medicine and the implementation of education policies in the U.K. and the U.S. which are undoubtedly making matters far worse — it might be worth responding.
“Transgender person accused of rape is remanded into female prison and sexually assaults inmates within days,” the Telegraph reports. Not quite ready to celebrate, the House of Commons opts for total silence.