There's a lot of great stuff in this piece, but I just get stuck every time on how people are fucking with their endocrine systems over the most incomprehensible, gobbledygook nonsense.
Masha Gessen's career seems to boil down to "pay attention to MEEEE", which isn't really the best strategy for a highly disagreeable person.
Some points:
1. Gessen seems to claim that sexual preference *is* a choice, but gender identity is *not*. That's going to make a lot of gay people very angry.
2. Social contagion among adult lesbians is absolutely a thing, unless Katie Herzog is lying about man-hating lesbian friends of hers living together all suddenly transitioning one after another.
I really wonder if we're going to see "Mommy Dearest" articles from Messen's kids in ten or fifteen years.
Sady Doyle is another who went trans, whom I will never read again. To me, it just shows the writer's hidden misogyny. LARPing as a man doesn't solve anything.
EVERYONE is nonbinary because no one is a perfect gender stereotype.
The world isn’t made up of
binary and nonbinary people.
The world is made up of people who exist as three-dimensional humans without seeking attention for it, and people who think their three-dimensionality is special and needs its own special label.
A thought: humanity may be made up of three-dimensional people, but every label parses what are otherwise whole people into segments, elevating attributes into identities such that, for all intents and purposes, many lose their humanity altogether.
I suppose we all go through aspects of this in finding ourselves. The adolescence to teenage years figure large, but with luck, and some effort, we (can) keep discovering ourselves as the vicissitudes of life provoke learning.
For some, the learning stops and labels become all that matters. Red lines of segregation are drawn. Performative conformity signals the boundaries and judgement rests on degrees of compliance.
Authoritarianism grows unnoticed until the three-dimensional folk are themselves labelled and, then, dealt with as can be seen now.
It’s a very sad thing to see this play out in those you love.
"Why did I think she was a serious thinker?" Exactly. Masha Gessen is a good journalist, and that's about it. A journalist is not a thinker, never mind a serious one. I saw an interview with her and Butler, which was embarrassing; she was listening to Butler as if the latter was Mother Teresa, full of piousness, and the single idea in the interview was that everybody who disagrees with gender ideology is a fascist. That was Butler--Gessen did have the courage to shyly say that maybe "fascist" was a bit harsh. The reason Gessen has been made into a star is because: 1. in the US, the first criteria to get fame is to declare that you belong to some kind of alternative sexual/gender/genital group and claim persecution for said belonging. Of course, the fact that we were dealing with Putin the Gay Persecutor impressed the American Progressives to no end; 2. Create a persona that follows some type of myth--in this case, the myth of the Russian emigre persecuted by a dictator. Combine the two and voila.
In that Lydia Polgreen piece, Polgreen and Gessen talk about autism and the possibility that some girls who want to transition are autistic. Gessen basically says they should go for it because they’d be better off as trans boys.
"It is probably easier to be a boy on the spectrum than a girl on the spectrum. Like, not a bad choice. Go for it. Your life will be easier if you feel like that’s something that’s an option that works for you."
Gessen is a mouthpiece for the most blatant tds propaganda, and how anyone like her can simultaneously revel in their freedom and privilege while also shitting all over it is beyond me. She’s an extreme absurdity.
I kept being reminded how we have a system in place, and have for centuries, that elevates weirdos to cultural prominence while hiding their darkness. I first noticed it many years ago with the celebrated Rousseau. Not just weirdos, but warped people who say one thing and do the reprehensible opposite, and the system hides it, while giving them cultural power to unleash their warpitude.
Speaking of dissidents, if you want another example, look into the near-sainted scumbag Vaclav Havel.
And I revisited it very recently with a bit of research into the well-known writer Kurt Vonnegut who has a reputation of a lovable curmudgeon. Just like your nihilistic but warm and perceptive uncle. In reality he was a nasty piece of work, and this is well documented by his wives, kids and friends alike. But when I did my research, I experienced much gaslighting and layers of deception hiding the reality behind the image. (And Cat;s Cradle is appalling twaddle.)
It's as though... such people are weaponized and used against "normies" in the centuries long Kulturkampf being waged by the personality disordered against the rest of us.
It's incredible how people in the US don't understand the propagandistic role of "cold war dissidents" even though they have had so many examples of them being used in the US to get the population into believing all the insane stories on the conditions in Russia. It's still not clear to many that those who left their own people are of the privileged class in their own countries.
There's a lot of great stuff in this piece, but I just get stuck every time on how people are fucking with their endocrine systems over the most incomprehensible, gobbledygook nonsense.
Masha Gessen's career seems to boil down to "pay attention to MEEEE", which isn't really the best strategy for a highly disagreeable person.
Some points:
1. Gessen seems to claim that sexual preference *is* a choice, but gender identity is *not*. That's going to make a lot of gay people very angry.
2. Social contagion among adult lesbians is absolutely a thing, unless Katie Herzog is lying about man-hating lesbian friends of hers living together all suddenly transitioning one after another.
I really wonder if we're going to see "Mommy Dearest" articles from Messen's kids in ten or fifteen years.
Sady Doyle is another who went trans, whom I will never read again. To me, it just shows the writer's hidden misogyny. LARPing as a man doesn't solve anything.
Reading this was just such a pleasure! Thank you so much, Glenna Goldis!
EVERYONE is nonbinary because no one is a perfect gender stereotype.
The world isn’t made up of
binary and nonbinary people.
The world is made up of people who exist as three-dimensional humans without seeking attention for it, and people who think their three-dimensionality is special and needs its own special label.
A thought: humanity may be made up of three-dimensional people, but every label parses what are otherwise whole people into segments, elevating attributes into identities such that, for all intents and purposes, many lose their humanity altogether.
I suppose we all go through aspects of this in finding ourselves. The adolescence to teenage years figure large, but with luck, and some effort, we (can) keep discovering ourselves as the vicissitudes of life provoke learning.
For some, the learning stops and labels become all that matters. Red lines of segregation are drawn. Performative conformity signals the boundaries and judgement rests on degrees of compliance.
Authoritarianism grows unnoticed until the three-dimensional folk are themselves labelled and, then, dealt with as can be seen now.
It’s a very sad thing to see this play out in those you love.
Clearly I need a second cup of coffee.
Procreation.
"Why did I think she was a serious thinker?" Exactly. Masha Gessen is a good journalist, and that's about it. A journalist is not a thinker, never mind a serious one. I saw an interview with her and Butler, which was embarrassing; she was listening to Butler as if the latter was Mother Teresa, full of piousness, and the single idea in the interview was that everybody who disagrees with gender ideology is a fascist. That was Butler--Gessen did have the courage to shyly say that maybe "fascist" was a bit harsh. The reason Gessen has been made into a star is because: 1. in the US, the first criteria to get fame is to declare that you belong to some kind of alternative sexual/gender/genital group and claim persecution for said belonging. Of course, the fact that we were dealing with Putin the Gay Persecutor impressed the American Progressives to no end; 2. Create a persona that follows some type of myth--in this case, the myth of the Russian emigre persecuted by a dictator. Combine the two and voila.
I was about to comment she sounds like a poundshop Butler (of course Butler sounds like a poundshop Butler)
Another narcissist
In that Lydia Polgreen piece, Polgreen and Gessen talk about autism and the possibility that some girls who want to transition are autistic. Gessen basically says they should go for it because they’d be better off as trans boys.
"It is probably easier to be a boy on the spectrum than a girl on the spectrum. Like, not a bad choice. Go for it. Your life will be easier if you feel like that’s something that’s an option that works for you."
Ugh. So sick of these freaks.
Gessen is a mouthpiece for the most blatant tds propaganda, and how anyone like her can simultaneously revel in their freedom and privilege while also shitting all over it is beyond me. She’s an extreme absurdity.
Loved this. Thank you.
I kept being reminded how we have a system in place, and have for centuries, that elevates weirdos to cultural prominence while hiding their darkness. I first noticed it many years ago with the celebrated Rousseau. Not just weirdos, but warped people who say one thing and do the reprehensible opposite, and the system hides it, while giving them cultural power to unleash their warpitude.
Speaking of dissidents, if you want another example, look into the near-sainted scumbag Vaclav Havel.
And I revisited it very recently with a bit of research into the well-known writer Kurt Vonnegut who has a reputation of a lovable curmudgeon. Just like your nihilistic but warm and perceptive uncle. In reality he was a nasty piece of work, and this is well documented by his wives, kids and friends alike. But when I did my research, I experienced much gaslighting and layers of deception hiding the reality behind the image. (And Cat;s Cradle is appalling twaddle.)
It's as though... such people are weaponized and used against "normies" in the centuries long Kulturkampf being waged by the personality disordered against the rest of us.
Well this didn’t age too well.
“Dostoevsky staring down the ditzes” — chef’s 💋
It's incredible how people in the US don't understand the propagandistic role of "cold war dissidents" even though they have had so many examples of them being used in the US to get the population into believing all the insane stories on the conditions in Russia. It's still not clear to many that those who left their own people are of the privileged class in their own countries.