Why They Hate Transsexuals and Drag Queens

By Michael J. Talmo June 17, 2023, shorter version published in Medium, March 2024

We humans have a need to feel morally superior. We revel in righteousness. We delight in moral indignation. We think that our way is the right way and that everyone else is wrong. But some carry this notion too far and try to impose what they think is right on others. They march and crusade against wickedness and sin like a hoard of angry villagers in the old Universal Frankenstein movies. In the name of God and all that is holy, they rationalize acts of cruelty and oppression. They seek positions of power where they work to undermine freedom and justice. In their warped and twisted minds, the forces of evil must be defeated by any and all means. And so what if some suffer and die along the way? To make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs.

A 2016 study in Social Psychological and Personality Science Found:

“Most people strongly believe they are just, virtuous, and moral; yet regard the average person as distinctly less so…These beliefs demand scientific attention for several reasons. For one, in contrast to other domains of positive self-belief, they likely contribute to the severity of human conflict. When opposing sides are convinced of their own righteousness, escalation of violence is more probable, and the odds of resolution are ominously low.”

The vile lead photo at the beginning of this article was originally posted by someone on Facebook who claims that he doesn’t hate drag queens or transsexuals. Unlike that person, maybe some of you honestly don’t hate transsexuals and drag queens. Maybe you just want to stop them from having an undue influence on society. Then this article is for you. Please read all of it and understand that bigots who hate never joke. They are dead serious about the harm they want to inflict. And make no mistake, the oppressive laws they support could ultimately lead to mass murder. So, if you go along with their agenda, understand the consequences of the path you are following.

My story

What qualifies me to write on this topic? I’m part of the LGBTQ community, which stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer. Yes, sometimes other letters are attached to this acronym. No, I’m not trans. I’m not gay. I’m bisexual. From 2003-2015, I ran a support group called Bi-Perspective out of the LGBT Community Center in New York City. I’m also polyamorous. Meaning, I can be in love with more than one person at the same time.

Running Bi-Perspective, my own personal experiences, and studying the scientific literature have taught me that gay (homosexual), straight (heterosexual), and bi (bisexual) don’t fit into separate little boxes. Instead, as explained here and here, sexuality runs along a spectrum. No one is 100% gay and no one is 100% straight. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) believed that all humans were bisexual. Bisexuality is also common throughout the animal kingdom as explained here, here, and here, which disproves the bigoted notion that gay sex is unnatural or a mental illness.

Since human sexuality is a spectrum, as demonstrated in this 2016 study, there are many different kinds of bisexuals. Some are right down the middle bi. Meaning, they like both sexes equally. This never means everyone indiscriminately. Others are more gay-oriented. Meaning, they are mainly attracted to and prefer the same sex. Others are straight-oriented. Meaning, they are mainly attracted to and prefer the opposite sex. In my case, I’m very straight-oriented. I have no sexual interest in men at all. In addition to women, I’m also attracted to transsexual women and some cross-dressers provided that they are very feminine and passable. A hairy guy in a wig, or someone that looks like Lia Thomas or Rachel Levine doesn’t do it for me.

In the 70s and 80s, I was part of New York City’s club scene. There was lots of wild sex and drug use. But I never did the drugs. This was due to the 1963 Japanese horror movie Attack of the Mushroom People. After seeing that, I found no need to hallucinate. But the wild sex I did. I had around 1200 sexual partners. Out of that number, over 20 were trans women, and less than 10 were cross-dressers. Of the trans women, only two had vaginas. One was an artist and the other was a medical doctor who liked to wear micro mini skirts with no underwear. When she walked down the street, men drooled and horns honked. I have not been with a trans woman nor any cross-dressers since 2006.

As for my parents, both were bigots. But they weren’t political. My mother was a devout Roman Catholic who took me to church every Sunday and put me in Catholic school, which I considered child abuse. She hated Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968), along with black people in general, and thought Hitler was right to exterminate the Jews. She also hated the Japanese and didn’t like the fact that some American soldiers married Japanese women after fighting in WWII. She used to call the wife of a WWII vet who lived on the same street “The Jap.” And for some strange reason she thought that Jesus lived and died only 200 years ago instead of 2,000 years ago. When she put an ad in the paper to sell her car, a Catholic priest responded. I asked him to tell my mother that Jesus lived 2000 years ago and not 200 years ago, which he did. She still wouldn’t budge and he bought the car.

My mom supported the Vietnam War and hated people who protested against it along with all the guys who dodged the draft. But when they tried to draft me in 1971, she declared that I was not going. Back then I wasn’t politically aware and wanted to go. I told her not to interfere. But mom got on the phone with the draft board. I don’t know what she said, but they reclassified me from 1-A to 3-A in a hurry and I never had to go. I will always be grateful to her for saving my ass from that nightmare.

Although my mom was tough and scary, at the age of ten I told her that I was an atheist and asked her to take me out of Catholic school. She did. I stopped being an atheist at age twenty. And my father, who thought that black people were lazy and useless among other things, paid me a great compliment a few years before he died in 1988. He said that knowing me caused him to become a lot more liberal on many issues. It’s for reasons like this that I think there is hope for the human race.

Tossing the word salad

There are many terms that are used to describe different expressions of gender. If you want to check them out, this article will help. But it’s important to understand some basic terms.

Transgender means someone who doesn’t identify with the sex they were born with. It’s an umbrella term for all trans people. However, the more factually, not politically, correct way to say this last part is the sex they were assigned at birth. Right-wingers hate that terminology and I don’t care. Too bad.

Transsexual means someone who had a partial or a full sex change via hormones and surgery. Some transsexuals are pre-ops. Meaning, they still have their original genitalia. A pre-op transsexual woman will still have her penis and sometimes her testicles as well. I’ve met plenty of transsexual women who are happy this way. A transsexual man will still have a vagina. Post-op transsexuals don’t have their original genitalia. They have the genitalia of the sex they identify with. Both pre-ops and post-ops can be totally passable or non-passable.

Here are some additional terms to know: cisgender or cis, people who identify with the sex they were assigned at birth–at least 97% of us; non-binary, a person who doesn’t identify as male or female; gender-fluid, someone who can sometimes identify as male and sometimes as female. Unless they’re androgynous, they don’t usually switch between ladies’ and men’s bathrooms; drag queens, in most cases, gay men who dress like women for the purpose of entertainment; cross-dressers, cis-gender men who like to wear women’s clothing and can identify as gay, straight, or bi. Like transsexuals, some of them can be totally passable.

Just what is a woman anyway

In 2022, anti-trans bigot Matt Walsh, who describes himself as a theocratic fascist, produced a dumb documentary called What Is a Woman? A segment of the documentary has Walsh asking women on the street to define what a woman is. None of the ones shown could give him an answer. He even asked a woman what a cat is and she walked away. If he had asked me what a woman is, I would have said what his wife said at the end of the documentary: “An adult human female.” If Walsh had asked me what a cat is, my response would have been “a small carnivorous mammal of the genus Felis that’s become a popular domesticated pet.”

People like Walsh want simple ready-made sound bite answers. They ignore the fact that life is messy and complex. “There are only two genders,” “only God can make a tree,” “the family that prays together stays together,” “America, love it or leave it,” “always believe women,” “no means no,” etc. are left and right-wing talking points that don’t represent objective reality.

So, let’s dispense with bumper sticker biology and face some facts. While there are only two reproductive cells, egg and sperm, or gametes, the religious decree, and that’s all it is, that there are only two sexes, doesn’t fit into the same tidy little boxes. Instead, biological sex, like sexual orientation and gender, is a spectrum. There is a percentage of the human race that is intersex.

For example, a man’s sex chromosomes are supposed to be XY, a woman’s are supposed to be XX. But there are plenty of men who have XX chromosomes and plenty of women who have XY chromosomes and don’t know it. Some intersex people “may have a mix of chromosomes, such as XXY. Or they may have some cells that are XY and some cells that are XX. Or they may have just one X chromosome (XO). Other combinations can occur too.” So, if you have a married couple where the guy is macho, muscular and bearded, while the woman is petite, soft and feminine, when it comes to chromosomes, she might be the man and he might be the woman.

Despite advances in prenatal tests and anatomy scans, determining the sex of an unborn child is not 100% accurate. So, babies aren’t assigned a definitive biological sex until they’re born, which is based on their genitals. But intersex babies can have genitalia with both male and female characteristics. “Some people are born with a mix of male and female biological features (such as a uterus and testicles) that can’t be seen on the outside.” Sometimes, “a child’s status as intersex doesn’t become obvious until puberty, when their body produces more of a hormone that doesn’t match their assigned sex.” A boy might look more feminine and a girl more masculine. “Around 2% of people worldwide have intersex traits…An estimated 1 in 100 Americans are intersex.”

Intersex people are not hermaphrodites, “since no cases have been identified of a human producing both male and female gametes.” It’s “an outdated term implying that a person is both fully male and fully female, which isn’t biologically possible.” This applies to all mammals and birds. Earthworms and land slugs are hermaphrodites, not people. And contrary to the ravings of anti-trans bigots, “being intersex isn’t a disorder, disease, or condition.” It’s just a natural variation found in nature.

Another mistake a lot of people make is conflating sex with gender. Sex is biological. Gender is how we feel about ourselves on the inside. It is our inner reality as opposed to external reality. Inner reality has to do with our taste in music, art, clothes, and what gives our lives purpose, joy, and meaning. How we feel about ourselves in regard to gender has nothing to do with being intersex. It has to do with our own unique essence. Inner truth is just as valid as external reality in these areas.

Simply stated: if you were born with a dick, all it means is you will always be someone who was born with a dick. If you have your dick surgically replaced with a vagina, then you will always be someone who had your dick replaced with a vagina. That’s objective reality. Both are facts that you can’t change. But if you feel at the core of your being that you’re truly a woman, then nothing can change that fact of inner reality. No one has the right to tell you who you should be or dictate what makes you happy.

Not identifying as the sex you were born with is also rooted in biology. It’s not just a belief. As explained in this 2018 article, brain activity in transgender people aligns with the sex they identify with rather than the sex they were assigned at birth. Here is a video of scientist Forrest Valkai explaining to a person who is uncomfortable with trans people how sex and biology really work.

Another argument anti-trans zealots invoke, which has nothing to do with science and everything to do with bigotry, is that forensic anthropologists can determine the sex of a person by skeletal remains. Thus, the bones of transsexual women would always be identified as male, which proves they are men. Nope! Sorry Charley. A 2015 study in the Journal of Anthropology involving the examination of 20 human skeletons from unknown populations and using 15 of the best scientific methods available, concluded: “No single individual was identified as belonging to one sex exclusively.” Some forensic websites still say that skeletal remains can accurately determine sex because they aren’t always up to date on the latest research. This also applies to forensic scientists.

What then is a woman? It’s a word, a group of letters strung together. In Spanish, this word is mujer, In Italian, it’s donna, in Swedish it’s kvinna. It means exactly and precisely what you, the individual, thinks it means—nothing more and nothing less. And what I or anyone else thinks doesn’t matter at all. The same applies to what I think a woman is, what Matt Walsh thinks a woman is, or what anyone else thinks a woman is. It’s a non-issue. It doesn’t matter folks. What matters is that we are all human beings and, as such, are entitled to be treated with respect and to live our lives as we wish to live them free of discrimination and harassment.

To quote this Facebook post: “Our world is not divided by race, color, gender, or religion. Our world is divided into wise people and fools. And fools divide themselves by race, color, gender, or religion.”

What is and Isn’t a bigot?

The dictionary defines bigot as “a person who is generally intolerant and hateful toward people they consider different in terms of race, religion, sexuality, or in other ways.”

Sincerely believing that a trans female can never be a woman doesn’t make you a bigot. Not all trans females consider themselves women either. I’ve met highly passable ones who referred to themselves as men and non-female. Others insist they are women. What makes you a bigot is not respecting their pronouns and refusing to serve them if you own a business or are in a profession that administers to the public. You don’t have a right to discriminate against other people or try to exclude them from society.

Experiencing fear, anxiety, distrust, concern, and even anger when confronted with something that challenges your preconceived notions of reality doesn’t make you a bigot. Being annoyed, offended, or thinking that something is stupid or immoral doesn’t make you a bigot either. And I can empathize with all of those feelings.

For example, if I found myself attracted to a regular guy, I would experience discomfort and anxiety because it’s something I’m not used to. Since I’m almost 70, it’s not likely to happen. But when it comes to stuff that annoys me and what I consider stupid, torn jeans are on my list. Why are people walking around with holes in their pants? My parents, who were born in 1911 and 1913, were adults during the Great Depression. They preached about how hard they worked so I wouldn’t have to gad about in rags.

What annoys me even more is guys walking around with their pants pulled down. That’s really stupid. Being overly tattooed, especially on the hands and face, wearing baseball caps backwards, and people walking around outside without a coat on or in shorts in bitter cold weather also ruffle my feathers. And I think all of the pronouns that people in the LGBTQ community use to describe themselves have gotten ridiculous. I also don’t like the idea of calling babies by the gender neutral term theyby.

A pronoun that I find especially annoying is pansexual. When I first heard the term, I was told it meant being attracted to transsexuals and androgynous people, while bisexuals are only attracted to cis men and cis women. Hugh? I’m bisexual and I’m attracted to trans women and androgynous people. Lots of bisexuals are. I made pansexual a topic of discussion at one of my support group meetings. Turned out I wasn’t alone in thinking the term was silly, useless, and dishonest. It’s really just another cutesy word for bisexual.

However, I’m not out there crusading against what I find silly, annoying, and uncomfortable. I have no problem with anyone who wants to call themselves pansexual. This also applies to people with tattoos, piercings, and torn jeans. In fact, big holes in the jeans of an attractive woman means more skin to look at. Why would I complain? This kid is no fool. Anyway, my point is, what I don’t like is my problem. With bigots it’s different. They hate and despise those who think and live contrary to their holier-than-thou view of the world and see them as the problem.

Some bigots are content to just vent. I have no problem with that. The ones I have a problem with, the ones who are really dangerous, are the ones who want to force their ideas of what is right and pure on all of us via bullying and getting bad laws and policies enacted. Passive bigots just go along with their authoritarian agenda and uniformed people are conned by their constant fear-mongering.

Is there really any difference?

Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

“Those that fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.”

In previous articles, I explained how COVID-19 wasn’t a viral pandemic, but a pandemic of mass hysteria that infected and deceived the entire world. Sometimes, mass hysteria can be limited to a community or a small area, like the Salem Witch Trails of the 17th century, or the Dancing Plague of 1518 where some 400 people compulsively danced until a number of them died from exhaustion. But like COVID-19, the Me Too Movement, and QAnon, hatred and fear of trans people and drag queens is mass hysteria in the form of a worldwide moral panic. Like all moral panics, it takes a sliver of truth and magnifies it into a major crisis. To the paranoid mind, a grain of sand becomes a desert.

Over the centuries, authoritarian bigots have been called Fascists, Nazis, communists, racists, etc. But it doesn’t matter. The packaging may be different and what they are railing against may be different, but the mentality is the same. With or without any knowledge of history, they will reproduce the same injustice and tyranny against their fellow humans again and again.

All of this vitriol against trans people and drag queens is just another purity crusade. Racial purity, moral purity, sexual purity, gender purity, national purity, medical purity, it’s all the same nonsensical bullshit: moral eugenics, weeding out the undesirables to avoid societal contamination. It’s the same kind of hatred that the Nazis under Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) ginned up against not only the Jewish people, but also against gay and transgender people.

Among the first works destroyed in mass Nazi book burnings shown in documentaries were from the library of the world’s first transgender clinic, established by Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld MD (1868-1935) in Berlin, the capital of Germany. As explained here and here, the Institute for Sexual Research existed from 1919 under the Weimar Republic to the beginning of the Nazi era in 1933.

Dr. Hirschfeld, who was Jewish and gay, did pioneering research on gender and sexuality. He tirelessly worked to educate the public that human sexuality ran along a bisexual spectrum. He also recognized the existence of trans and gender-nonconforming people and that they were living “in accordance with their nature, not against it.” He affirmed that people “who wished to wear clothes of the opposite sex…should be considered as the opposite sex.” He worked to repeal anti-gay and anti-trans laws. Dr. Hirschfeld viewed his clinic as a place of “research, teaching, healing, and refuge.”

In addition to the institute providing education and counseling on sex, advice on contraception, offices for feminist activists, and a printing house for sex reform journals, it was the first clinic in the world to perform “modern gender-affirmation surgery.” But only for male-to-female transsexuals, which included hormone therapy that allowed them to grow natural breasts and softer features.” Genital altering surgery for female-to-male trans people “would not be practiced until the late 1940s.”

Dr. Hirschfeld’s institute also housed “an immense library on sexuality, gathered over many years” that included “rare books” on protocols for male-to-female surgical transitions. All of this irreplaceable collection was lost less than four months after Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. Fortunately, Dr. Hirschfeld was out of the country when the Nazis shut down the clinic. But his image was used in Nazi propaganda material depicting him as the “worst kind of offender” of the Third Reich.

Nazi Germany is a chilling example of what can happen when organized hate and bigotry engulf a nation. It creates a hive mentality that brands any who stray from it worthy of extermination. Look at these two photos and ask yourself: is there really any difference?

Lies, hypocrisy, and moral outrage

Since bigotry and prejudice are irrational, scaring people with lies is the only way fanatics can win. Their tactics are always the same: denounce the opposition as evil and perverted. The most effective way to do this is by claiming that children need to be protected. This is their moral high ground, their ivory tower of virtue. Protecting kids and families was used by the Nazis to carry out their agenda of mass genocide. This kind of propaganda shuts down all logic and critical thinking because of our Judeo-Christian culture’s discomfort with sex.

As explained here, public opinion polls can be very accurate or very inaccurate depending on how they’re conducted. For example, the Washington Post reported that when people are asked if they want criminal penalties and prison time attached to anti-trans policies, support for them drops significantly. In reality, most Democrats, Republicans, and Independents support the rights of trans people. But fear-mongering by anti-trans bigots can still get enough people to go along with their agenda by invoking the children are in danger argument. Case in point: worrying about who is lurking in the bathroom.

The current manifestation of bathroom hysteria began in 2014. The city council of Houston, Texas passed an anti-discrimination ordinance called HERO (Houston Equal Rights Ordinance) that would have protected the civil rights of LGBTQ people. Most states and, prior to 2020, federal law did not specifically protect them. But right-wing opponents who supported allowing businesses to discriminate against LGBTQ people if they offend their religious beliefs got the ordinance put up for referendum on the November 2015 ballot. Polls showed that most voters supported HERO. But conservatives started whining that if trans people could use bathrooms of the sex they identify as, male rapists and perverts could dress up as females and sexually assault women. It worked and HERO went down the toilet.

Truth is the bathroom predator meme is a lie. A right-wing hate group called MassResistance admitted it on their website:

“Our side concocted the ‘bathroom safety’ male predator argument as a way to avoid an uncomfortable battle over LGBT ideology, and still fire up people’s emotions. It worked in Houston a few years ago.”

This kind of scare tactic isn’t new. Protecting women in public bathrooms was used to justify racial segregation, invoking the fear that fragile white females wouldn’t be safe in bathrooms by portraying black people as “inherently animalistic and criminal.” It was used to defeat the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment) in the 1970s and 1980s. 35 of the 38 states required for ratification passed it. Then right-wingers like Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) began claiming that the passage of ERA would lead to unisex bathrooms among other horrors. And since today’s bigots mockingly label trans women biological males, they are also labeled a danger to women and children in bathrooms.

In reality, trans people are allowed to use public bathrooms that match their gender identity in 18 US states, in some for over 20 years, plus Washington DC, and in over 200 municipalities nationwide. Yet, government officials and police forces in these places have reported no incidence of criminal activity in public bathrooms committed by transgender people. Read what government officials and police in these places have to say in this article, which utterly debunks the tranny predator in the bathroom myth. The scientific literature also refutes this lie, as reported in this 2019 study in the journal of Sexuality Research and Social Policy.

And let’s not forget about how dangerous it is to let trans women use female locker rooms, which carries over to another right-wing bogeyman: trans women are ruining women’s sports. Anti-trans bigots not only want to ban trans female athletes from competing in women’s sports, but worse and even more cruel, ban trans girls in elementary and high school from engaging in sports with their peers, which, as explained here, is vital to their mental, emotional, and physical well-being along with helping them achieve better life skills. K-12 sports are not all about winning.

There are three kinds of people that object to trans women competing in sports with cis women: those who aren’t bigots, but honestly and sincerely believe that trans female athletes have the strength and speed of men and therefore have an unfair advantage; bigots who don’t really care about women’s sports and just want to makes the lives of trans people as miserable as possible; those who are a combination of the other two.

Without any spin, here are the real facts:

Transsexual females have been competing in women’s sports for half a century. However, as reported here and here, out of a US population of around 332 million, 1.3 -1.6 million people 18 and older and 300,000 youths ages 13-17 identify as transgender. Since not all transgender people identify as women and only a small percentage seriously compete in sports, the number of trans women in pro and amateur sports has always been tiny, as shown on this Wikipedia list of LGBT sportspeople.

Studies have been done on transsexual athletes. The best and most important study was published in the peer review journal Sports Medicine. But it wasn’t just a study. It was a systematic review, which, is the highest level of evidence in science. It’s a painstaking thorough analysis of all the literature, which selects the best quality studies, and synthesizes the results. In other words, it looks at the big picture, which eliminates bias. Under “Conclusion” it states: “Currently, there is no direct or consistent research suggesting transgender female individuals (or male individuals) have an athletic advantage at any stage of their transition.”

An easy way to tell the aforementioned study is correct is to look at who holds the world records in various women’s sports. In every case, it’s cis women. Trans women have broken some state and regional records, but not world records. As explained in this 2023 article in the peer review journal Science, lab studies of hemoglobin, muscle mass, and testosterone levels don’t show who can run faster, jump higher, throw farther, or who is stronger—athletic performance does.

Examples: since 2004, trans athletes have been allowed to compete in the Olympics. None ever qualified until 2021, when Laurel Hubbard became the first Trans woman to make it. She competed in weightlifting and lost to 21-year-old Li Wenwen. But the strongest woman who ever lived is Becca Swanson, age 49. She holds all the world records: Bench Press – 600.8 lb, Squat – 854.3 lb, Deadlift – 683.4 lb.

This can still be difficult to accept because of how biased media sources like Fox News spin the narrative. For example, champion swimmer and trans woman Lia Thomas stands almost 6’4 and isn’t very passable. Showing her towering over other female swimmers, featuring the sore losers who whine about losing to her, not to mention depicting her as an object of ridicule, creates the illusion that allowing her to compete is a travesty of justice. Incidentally, one of the swimming records that Thomas broke in 2022 was broken by a cis woman and former teammate in 2023.

There are also some very tall cis women. Former pro basketball player Margo Dydek (1974-2011) stood 7’2. She was the tallest female basketball player who ever lived. Look at the picture below and ask yourself if it was fair for her to compete in women’s sports. Her fellow basketball players didn’t complain. And while a great player, she didn’t make the top 20 best of all time list. Number one on that list, the best of all time, is Diana Taurasi, who stands 6′ tall. Tragically, Margo died of a heart attack at age 37 while pregnant with her third child who also died.

And women don’t have to be Olympic weightlifters to be exceptionally strong. An ex-girlfriend who I lived with in the late 1990s, was 5’5 and a shapely 150lbs. Her strength was off the charts due to genetics. Years before we met, she had a female friend who had an abusive husband. One day, while they were sitting in the woman’s kitchen, he started threatening them with a knife. My ex easily disarmed him, shoved him up against the wall and put the knife to his throat. And he was a big guy. Fortunately, she didn’t kill him.

Hardcore anti-trans bigots don’t care about facts and science, so they will tell lies about trans female athletes. A good example of this was the smear campaign launched against MMA fighter Fallon Fox, the first trans woman to compete in that sport. She competed in the featherweight division from 2012-2014. She never competed as a man. Fox stands 5’7 and weighs 135-145 lbs. To gin up emotional reactions like shock and disgust, bigots referred to her as a biological man beating up women. MMA is an athletic competition between two consenting adults who are trained to beat each other up folks. That’s what MMA fighters get paid to do.

Social media posts and right-wing podcasts claimed that Fox fractured the skull of an opponent, some claimed two opponents. This photo of a bloody female MMA fighter was touted as one of Fox’s skull fracture victims. Claims were also made that cis women had “no chance” against her. As reported in Reuters, Outsports, and Politifact, all of these claims are false.

The bloody woman photo was from a bout with another cis woman that happened in 2018, four years after Fox retired. Fox did fracture a bone around the eye of one of her opponents. But as explained here, this was an orbital fracture, not a skull fracture that sometimes happens in the male and female divisions of MMA. Bigots also altered the voice of Fox in a post-fight interview to make her sound like a man. Here is her actual feminine voice.

As for the claim that women had no chance, Fox’s MMA record is 5 wins, 1 loss. She lost via TKO to Ashlee Evans-Smith, a cis woman with a current unimpressive record of 6 wins, 5 losses. Watch the fight here and see if you still think trans women have an athletic advantage.

But the main gripe for a lot of anti-trans bigots isn’t athletic performance, it’s their daughters sharing bathrooms and locker rooms with trans kids in schools. They think that their female children will be hopelessly traumatized if they see a penis. If the trans girl no longer has a penis, they will say it doesn’t matter because he used to have one.

Examples: the bigoted tirades of swimmers Riley Gaines, who competed in a race with Lia Thomas where both finished in fifth place, and champion NCAA swimmer Kylee Alons. Both women are famous for lamenting how traumatic it was for them to change in a locker room with Lia Thomas. Alons opted to change in a storage closet. Talk about special snowflakes with an exaggerated sense of entitlement.

Ask yourselves this: why is it okay for groups of men to see each other naked and groups of women to see each other naked, but not groups of men and women? Why is it okay for male children to see grown men naked in locker rooms and female children to see grown women naked in locker rooms, but not adults of the opposite sex? Has anyone stopped to consider that sexually segregated locker rooms encourage gay sex? In high school, when I was 15, our male gym teacher decided to take a shower with us. He had an erection that you could hang towels on, which he seemed very proud of.

I think it would be a whole lot healthier if we stopped separating the sexes and made public bathrooms and locker rooms all gender. I’ve been to naturist events over the years where the locker rooms were all gender. Adults and children saw each other naked. Don’t recall seeing any erect penises. Been to lots of nude beaches too. At age 10 and under, us kids used to look at girlie mags like Playboy that we found in the trash. We weren’t harmed. There is no evidence that children are harmed by exposure to adult nudity. I’ve also been to Cap d’Agde in France. It has a naturist community where you can shop, go out to dinner, or whatever in the nude. The only reason this frightens some people is social conditioning.

As explained here, all gender bathrooms and locker rooms would be a lot safer and more convenient for everyone. Parents will be able to accompany their opposite-sex children into facilities without being hassled. People with disabilities who have opposite sex caregivers will find using the bathroom more convenient and with less chance of injury. Converting guys’ and gal’s bathrooms to all gender in crowded venues like nightclubs would mean women wouldn’t have to wait in long lines to pee. And we have all gender facilities in some cities, health clubs and colleges now.

As explained here and here, sexually segregated public bathrooms have only been around since the 19^th century. In ancient Rome, “gender neutral” public baths and toilets “were the norm.” The bathrooms had rows of close together holes in benches with no privacy partitions, as shown here and here. After the Empire collapsed along with its sewage system, public bathrooms disappeared. It wasn’t until the 1820s that they started to reappear. But due to sexist ideas that women were delicate and in need of protection, it was believed that they needed separate facilities, which has caused nothing but trouble.

For years, women who look masculine have been harassed and attacked for using public bathrooms because bigots thought they were men or transsexuals. In 2007, a woman was kicked out of a New York City restaurant for trying to use the bathroom because they thought she was a man. She sued and was awarded $35,000; in 2015, a woman was violently thrown out of a Detroit restaurant after using the ladies’ room in spite of offering to show her ID and her friend vouching for her sex. She also sued; in 2022, a woman was followed into the ladies’ room at a gambling casino and verbally berated by a woman who thought she was trans. The bigoted busybody was barred from the casino for the day.

Impossible to tell who is cis and who is trans based on appearance. Former MMA fighter Ericka “Pitbull” Newsome, lower right in photo on left is a cis woman. Honestly, girls, what would you think if you saw her in the ladies’ bathroom? Middle photo: Transsexual actress Jamie Clayton. Would you question her gender if you saw her in the Ladies’ room? And If transsexuals are forced to use public bathrooms based on the sex they were assigned at birth, you might encounter this trans guy in the powder room ( Buzzfeed)

How would bathroom segregation laws be vigorously enforced? Will women who don’t look feminine enough have to show a gender certificate to some toilet Nazi guarding the bathroom door? A more high tech method would probably be used. A microchip verifying gender identity could be placed under the skin in your hand that will be read by a scanner on the bathroom door. If you’re the wrong sex, you won’t be able to get in. And why limit the chip to sexual identity? It will probably have a whole bunch of personal info on you; marital status, vaccination status, criminal record status, etc.

Bathroom segregation laws threaten the safety of all women. They are discrimination based on what one appears to be rather than what one actually is. And trans people are far more likely to be the victims of bathroom violence, police violence, bullying, and sexual assault as explained here, here, here, and here. Bans on trans-female athletes also harm cis-female athletes by subjecting them to invasive tests if their gender is questioned. Abnormally high testosterone levels or other intersex traits could ban them from competition, as was the case with Caster Semenya. We don’t need the gender police folks. Laws and rules that are based on fear and ignorance protect no one.

But the meanest, cruelest part of the anti-trans agenda is prohibiting gender-affirming care, which includes puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgery. Anti-trans bigots claim that kids are being irreparably harmed and mutilated by these procedures, which they label “child abuse.” They even post pictures of trans boys who had top surgery to get rid of female breasts shortly after the procedure. Obviously, there will be scarring and swelling after any kind of plastic surgery. In time, the scars heal and become less noticeable. So far, 19 US states have passed laws banning and restricting transgender care. As explained here and here, this is cut-and-paste legislation created by far-right groups with names that are the opposite of what they actually stand for, such as Do No Harm.

As explained here and here, a person has to be at least 18 for sex reassignment surgery. This also applies to most countries in Europe. Hormone treatments to make the body more feminine or masculine typically begin at 16. But there have been extremely rare exceptions where these procedures were done earlier. According to this article, genital surgery was done on 56 US patients ages 13 -17 from 2019-2021. Most likely the majority were 16 or 17. Last year, a leading transgender health association issued new guidelines that recommend slightly lower age limits: 14 for hormone therapy and 15-17 for some surgeries, which requires parental consent.

Puberty blockers have been around since the 1980s. In 1993, the FDA approved them for treating precocious puberty, a condition where a child enters puberty younger than 8-13 for girls and 9-14 for boys. Children are now entering puberty at earlier ages. In most cases, no one knows why. But a major factor might be obesity due to the modern junk food diet. Puberty blockers were also FDA approved to treat prostate cancer and endometriosis. But since the early 1990s, they’ve been used to treat “gender dysphoria,” emotional distress caused by a feeling of being in the wrong body due to identifying as the opposite sex, which, is not FDA approved. However, off-label prescribing, using an approved drug for something it wasn’t approved for, is both legal and common. And contrary to anti-trans propaganda, gender dysphoria is no longer considered a mental disorder, but if untreated by gender-affirming care, can lead to severe depression and suicide.

Outrageous claims by anti-trans bigots include closing down London’s Tavistock Gender Clinic was due to the government recognizing that it was corrupt, incompetent, and exploiting confused children. Another whopper was that puberty blockers used to treat trans kids are linked to thousands of deaths. In reality, Tavistock was the only clinic in England that offered care and services for trans kids. It was overburdened and understaffed, so to better serve young trans people, the government is replacing it with multiple regional services to make care more timely and accessible. And, as NBC News reported, the 6,370 deaths over four decades linked to puberty blockers likely apply to terminally ill cancer patients, not trans kids.

Last year, Matt Walsh got caught in a big fib on Joe Rogan’s show. Rogan asked Walsh how many kids were on puberty blockers. Walsh replied: “we’re into the millions now at this point. Yeah, that would be my guess.” Rogan’s producer, Jamie Vernon, decided to fact check that assertion. Turns out only 4,780 adolescents had been placed on puberty blockers within the last five years.” Here is the video clip.

No one has a problem with using puberty blockers for treating early puberty. Recently passed state laws only prohibit puberty blockers for trans kids. If puberty blockers are so dangerous, why aren’t they banning them for all children? And assertions that the long-term effects of puberty blockers haven’t been studied are utterly false. Puberty blockers have been studied for decades and are considered safe, their effects reversible, and as reported in the Lancet, do not cause infertility.

This kind of hypocrisy also applies to gender-reassignment surgery. As reported by Human Rights Watch, lawmakers also exempt, “sometimes encourage,” gender-affirming surgeries on infants and toddlers who are intersex to enforce gender conformity. These kids who obviously can’t consent, “are often subjected to ‘normalizing’ surgeries that are irreversible, risky, and medically unnecessary.” They can cause “scarring, loss of sensation, lifelong sexual dysfunction, urinary incontinence, psychological trauma, and permanent sterilization.” And “these clauses are in the same laws that attempt to punish performing the exact same procedures on older transgender youth who are actively requesting such care.” In other words, “these bills are about erasing bodily diversity, not protecting anyone.”

Surgeries on very young intersex children greatly increased due to the research of Professor John Money, PhD (1921-2006). Anti-trans bigots are quick to denounce him for his unethical experiments on David Reimer (1965-2004) and his identical twin brother. Due to a botched circumcision, Reimer’s penis was destroyed. Money convinced his parents to have David’s genitals surgically removed and raise him as a girl named Brenda. Money did this to test his theory that gender was learned rather than innate. His experiments included having the kids engage in simulated sexual play. What money did was terrible. But bigots don’t consider the harm done to trans kids, gay kids, and bi kids who go through conversion therapy, which, in some cases, includes beatings, exorcisms, forced nudity, electroshock therapy, and even rape to make them identify as cis or straight.

What Money really did was reverse conversion therapy. It was an utter failure. David was cis, and never identified as a girl. When he found out what had happened, he began living as a male and got gender-reassignment surgery. He committed suicide due to multiple problems in his life. Money’s experiment proved what is documented in the scientific literature: conversion therapy doesn’t work. You can’t make a cis kid trans and you can’t make a trans kid cis. As explained here, children as young as 5, or even younger, can know their gender identity.

Another propaganda tactic used by anti-trans bigots is touring around the country with a handful of young people who are suing for damages, claiming they were coerced and victimized by the medical system into transitioning in order to justify outlawing gender-affirming care. This creates the illusion that regret is common among transsexual youth. Obviously, when it comes to any life-altering medical procedure, there will always be some who regret their decision. For example, an elderly friend of mine regrets getting a penile implant for erectile dysfunction.

As reported here, “studies indicate that only 1% to 2% of transgender individuals detransition,” go back to their sex assigned at birth,“and that often happens because of discrimination and other social pressures, not because patients genuinely feel they have made a mistake about their gender identity.” And as anyone who sues for damages knows, in order to collect lots of money, you have to play up how badly you were traumatized, even if you weren’t.

And it’s sheer hypocrisy that there is no huge outcry from the protect our kids crowd when it comes to medicating millions of them into the twilight zone with psychiatric medication. As reported in the BMJ (British Medical Journal), numerous studies show that these drugs cause suicide and violent behavior in adults and children. All of these crazy mass shootings we’re seeing have been linked to the use of psychiatric drugs, which even more people are using now due to stress caused by the COVID-19 lockdowns. Instead of curtailing gun ownership, we should restrict the use of these drugs.

Another right-wing bogeyman is drag queens reading stories to children. Drag Story Hour began in 2015. It was founded by Michelle Tea, a cis woman and a mom. Right-wingers in the US, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand are losing their lunch over guys dressed up like women reading stories to kids. They’re equally outraged by family-friendly drag shows, which have nothing to do with drag story hour, where drag go-go dancing occurs. Children love the drag queens and so do their parents. But bigots see these events as sexualizing children and attempting to recruit them into the LGBTQ lifestyle. Back in 1977, singer Anita Bryant used the same scare tactic to repeal a Dade County, Florida ordinance “that prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.” Naturally, the coalition she led was called Save Our Children.

Reactionary bigots are labeling drag queens pedophiles and groomers and have successfully restricted drag shows and story hours in some parts of the country, like Tennessee and Montana. Buzz words have always been popular with authoritarian bigots. With the Nazis it was Bolshevism and Jew. With today’s right-wing bigots, it’s woke, libtard, groomer and pedophile. On the authoritarian left, it’s misogynist, conspiracy theorist, and mansplaining. Buzzwords are designed to shut down conversation and generate negative emotions, such as anger, fear, and hate.

But why drag queens? How could interacting with them possibly harm kids? Milton Berle (1908-2002), known as “Mr. Television” and “Uncle Miltie” was America’s first television superstar. He frequently appeared in drag on his variety show, which ran from 1948-1956. Conservative, prudish, heavily censored TV thought nothing of millions of kids watching. Flip Wilson (1933-1998) regularly appeared in drag as Geraldine on his TV show in the 1970s. Here’s a video of former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani in drag being hit on by Donald Trump. And that’s just a tiny sample.

Exposure to other lifestyles teaches children to understand others and not fear those who are different.It teaches them not to ridicule and bully others who are different. It teaches them peaceful co-existence instead of being divided into armed camps. It also teaches children to love and accept themselves if they are different. Drag story hours and family-friendly drag shows are about eliminating hate and fear, which makes communities safer.

In order to discredit drag story hours, anti-trans activist Christopher Rufo posted on Twitter that conservatives should start calling drag queens “trans strippers” because “it has a more lurid set of connotations and shifts the debate to sexualization.” Bigots will also sensationalize any trans person who commits a crime to suggest that all trans people are criminals. But as shown here and here, plenty of Christian priests and ministers also sexually abuse children and commit other crimes.

Another hate tactic is labeling trans people and drag queens mentally ill and delusional and calling for them to be put away. This, too, is right out of the playbook of totalitarian regimes like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. They would label people who opposed their ideology mentally ill in order to discredit them and lock them up. It’s called punitive psychiatry and yes, we also do it here in the USA.

Mental disorders are an artificial social construct. Like the word sin, mental illness is a label that we attach to what we don’t like. I think we’re all nuts and delusional to some degree. But the only time we should worry about delusions and craziness is if people are a danger to themselves or others. And I’m talking physically and objectively, not morally. For example, Leatherface of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre films was a brutal sadistic killer who should be locked away. Kris Kringle, brilliantly played by Edmund Gwenn (1877-1959), in the 1947 classic Miracle on 34^th Street, was a delusional old man who was convinced he was Santa Claus. He wasn’t a danger to anyone.

Tear down that wall

Before the use of gun powder, cities and towns protected themselves with thick high walls of wood and stone. Invading armies would have to lay siege to those walls. Meaning, they would have to spend weeks, sometimes months or years, trying to get in. Sometimes a city’s defenses were too powerful and they would have to use trickery to get in, as illustrated in Homer’s story about the Trojan Horse.

The Bill of Rights, the Nuremburg Code, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, along with laws against discrimination are like the thick walls of Troy. They were put in place to protect us from would-be tyrants. They also were put in place to remind us that tyranny could happen again. We need to keep those protective walls in repair because bigots and power-hungry fanatics are constantly chipping away at them, hoping that they will ultimately come tumbling down. They do this by setting legal precedents.

Our legal system is built on precedents. This is known as stare decisis, which is Latin for “to stand by that which is decided.” It obligates courts to follow rulings made in similar cases. In the US, the ultimate decider of precedent is the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS). Most of the time, it will follow the precedents laid down by previous rulings. But on rare occasions, SCOUTS will overturn an established precedent, which will then become the new precedent that all lower courts must follow. The most recent example of this was overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case that legalized abortion. This was accomplished by decades of petty restrictions being attached to abortions upheld by the courts, which had been systemically packed with anti-choice judges.

The current wave of anti-trans legislation follows the same pattern: get a bunch of stupid unjust laws passed, get as many as possible upheld by the courts, and marginalize factions of a community or group if the group as a whole is popular. In other words, create division and fear in the LGBTQ community. Convince LGB that trans people and drag queens are too radical and that their whole community will suffer if they continue to support them. This propaganda image says it better than mere words.

Source Facebook

I urge the LGBTQ community not to fall for this divide and conquer baloney. A single thin wooden pencil can easily be broken in half by a pair of weak hands. But a whole bunch of thin wooden pencils can’t be broken by a pair of very powerful hands. Strength comes from unity. Don’t let them divide us, because if you do, make no mistake, sooner or later they will come for all lesbians and gay men. It might even pave the way for anti-Semitic bigots to declare open season on Jews. As reported here and here, neo-Nazi groups are among right-wing groups disrupting LGBTQ events.

Tyranny begets more tyranny. Petty injustices often morph into major atrocities. Once you give the government the power to do something, set a precedent, it will expand that power. Forcing people to buy auto insurance was used to justify forcing people to buy health insurance under the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). When COVID-19 came along, allowing businesses to impose stupid rules on customers like “no shirt, no shoes, no service,” was used to justify no mask no service. Mandatory vaccination for school kids and for people in some jobs and professions was expanded to try to force everyone to get vaccinated.

Another effective way to destroy freedom is by overly defining crime. This is what Nazi Germany did. Under the Weimar Republic (1919-1933), sexual relations between men were illegal under Paragraph 175. This law was enacted in 1871 during the Imperial period or Second Reich (1871-1918). It criminalized homosexual contact, as in “male-on-male penetration.” Merely being homosexual wasn’t really considered a crime. But in 1935, the Nazis revised the statute, allowing “prosecution for even relatively insignificant forms of erotic interaction between males, including kissing, holding hands, and mutual masturbation. By 1938, German courts ruled that any contact between men deemed to have sexual intent, even ‘simple looking’ or ‘simple touching,’ could be grounds for arrest and conviction.”

In the same way, reactionary religious and feminist groups in the US have gotten laws passed that overly define child molestation, sexual assault, sexual harassment, sex trafficking, and rape, so they can mean just about anything. Drunken sex, a regretted sexual encounter, a joke, a compliment, asking for a date, looking at a woman too long, being affectionate with a child, even having sexual thoughts about children have gotten people, usually men, fired from their jobs, socially ostracized, sued, and criminally prosecuted. We now have a kangaroo court system that only requires a person’s word to convict someone, expands or does away with statutes of limitation, allows non-witnesses to testify, and tries multiple cases against a defendant at the same time.

This is how Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein got railroaded into prison. This is how Donald Trump lost a civil case and was ordered to pay 5 million dollars to a woman who claims he raped her in a department store dressing room almost 30 years ago. Prior bad acts witnesses and testimony by paid psychologists who are supposedly experts on rape and sexual assault, even though they never treated the so-called victims, were used to convict them because the prosecution, in Trump’s case, the plaintiff, didn’t have a case. The purpose of these unjust tactics is to up conviction rates, not serve justice.

What’s especially dangerous is they keep increasing the penalties for this litany of overly defined sex crimes. Last month, Florida Governor, and Republican presidential candidate, Ron DeSantis, great on his stance against COVID restrictions, a nightmare on just about everything else, passed a law that imposes the death penalty for sexual battery on persons under 12. In a 2008 ruling, SCOTUS prohibited states from imposing the death penalty for child rape if the victim doesn’t die, because it will discourage the victim from coming forward and encourage the abuser to kill them. Also, keep in mind that the overly broad way these laws are written combined with a mere accusation being enough to convict, a lot of innocent people could wind up dead. It could happen to your coworkers, your friends, your family, it could even happen to you.

Instead of worrying about transsexuals like Lia Thomas ruining women’s sports, drag queens interacting with children, or who is in the bathroom, worry about how bigoted transphobic politicians and their minions of useful idiots are ruining justice and liberty for all of us.

Know thyself

Trans people and drag queens represent a challenge to rigid gender roles and religious taboos. But this isn’t the main reason for all the hatred that’s being directed at them. An anti-trans bigot on Facebook posted this Instagram video of a very attractive and extremely passable, I’m guessing, crossdresser. In the commentary on Instagram, a father said his 13-year-old son told him that when he starts dating he’s going to insist on seeing baby pictures first. Now, you might say, he’s just a kid probably brainwashed by his dear old dad. But the guy who posted the video on Facebook is an adult. He lamented that he can’t trust what he sees and might have another woman inspect his date’s genitalia. In other words, he’s admitting that he is attracted to transsexuals and crossdressers and that terrifies him.

Psychiatrist and pioneering sex researcher, Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957), wrote many books on human sexuality. He explained that our prudish culture causes children to repress and fear their sexual feelings, which also causes enormous rage that can be acted out passively or overtly. People aren’t aware of these unconscious feelings. Instead, they feel anxiety when exposed to things that trigger them. Most people will deal with this anxiety by engaging in self-destructive behavior that only affects them individually along with those closest to them. But there is a small percentage who will project their anxiety onto others and blame them for how bad they feel. Reich called this the “emotional plague.”

Emotional plague characters try to avoid their painful emotions and repressed desires by eliminating excitation from their environment. They will rationalize this by labeling whatever triggers them as evil, immoral or in some way dangerous. But the only real danger is to their weak and unstable sense of self. That which they call dirty and disgusting is not in books, magazines, works of art, movies, gay Pride parades, or drag story hours: it’s in them. They rationalize that if only we could get rid of this or that everything will be okay. But the problem is in them. As the old saying goes, “wherever you go, there you are.” Or to quote Reich, “there is always desire behind a taboo.”

This is why there are factions of the gay and lesbian community that dislike bisexuals. They know that a lot of people who identify as gay are really bi. Factions of the straight community dislike gays and bisexuals for the same reason. People at my support group talked about how they would rationalize identifying as straight while engaging in same-sex encounters by claiming they were drunk, or that they didn’t reciprocate. In the 80s, a lesbian friend and I regularly engaged in sexual play. She also had all the way sex with other guys, but insisted she was gay.

In 2010, I was sitting on a bench at the LGBT Center reading when two women sat next to me and started smooching. One was butch, the other was fem. At first, I pretended not to notice, but then the three of us looked at each other and started laughing. The fem gal had to leave and the butch and I got into a long conversation. Turns out she was from Russia where she had been married to a man. I asked her what being gay was like in Russia and if she fantasized about women while having sex with him. She told me that she enjoyed sex with him, never fantasized about women, and had sex with other men before she got married. I commented, “So, you’re really bisexual.” To which she replied: “I choose to identify as lesbian.”

When I did massage professionally in the 80s and 90s, plenty of male clients wanted me to give them a happy ending (jerk them off). When I told them I didn’t do that, a common reply was: “It’s OK, I’m straight.” Didn’t work for them. Happy endings weren’t part of the massage.

As I see it, there are two kinds of sexually uptight bigots: naive types who are so repressed and stunted that they never got to experience much of anything; hypocrites who pretend to be morally righteous, but secretly indulge in all kinds of sex and kink. This is why countless religious leaders and politicians who condemn, vote for, and support punitive sex laws have been caught having affairs, molesting children, having gay sex, etc. Both types will rabidly defend the social order that is the real cause of how screwed up and miserable they are. They can’t stand people who are living happy lives and being true to themselves because they are incapable of doing the same. They hate and fear freedom—especially expressions of sexual freedom, because they aren’t free.

Emotional plague bigots also accuse others of what they are doing. When they accuse LGBTQ people of imposing their morals on them and coming after their children, what they are really saying is “don’t make me uncomfortable by arousing feelings in me that I don’t want to feel.” And, of course, it is them who are imposing their morality on the LGBTQ community by getting punitive laws passed. They are the ones who crash drag story hours and protest gay Pride events. I don’t recall hearing about any drag queens showing up at churches to protest religion.

Emotional plague bigots are also oblivious to the harm that they inflict. They exhibit many of the classic traits of narcissistic personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder. In other words, they lack empathy and compassion for others. Example: this month, ABC news reported that parents of trans children are fleeing states like Texas due to laws that threaten to take their kids away from them. The comments section was filled with nothing but hate. There was no understanding, nor even an attempt to understand, what it’s like to have a child with gender dysphoria.

People like the aforementioned bigots only care about their rights and their freedom. They want to disrespect and mock trans people, but expect everyone to genuflect and pay homage to their feelings and beliefs. They accuse trans people of wanting special rights when they are the ones who want special rights. For example, they don’t want freedom of religion, they want religious superiority, which is why “In God We Trust” is on our money and “under God” is in the Pledge of Allegiance. There was no mention of God originally.

Some emotional plague bigots also exhibit the traits of paranoid personality disorder. They see dark evil plots everywhere and conflate things that are totally unrelated, such as claiming that being transsexual is a form of transhumanism. Wrong! Transhumanism is the view “that biological evolution will eventually be overtaken by advances in genetic, wearable and implantable technologies.” It’s Klaus Schwab, head of the World Economic Forum, who is talking about everyone having brain implants so he can monitor their emotions. Some trans women, like lots of other women, just want breast implants. The only thing the word transgenderism has in common with the word transhumanism is the prefix trans.

What makes emotional plague bigots especially dangerous is that they can tap into the fear, anger, and pain of masses of people and create moral panics. They make sweeping incorrect statements that create the illusion that they know what they’re talking about. Since most people don’t like to think or study an issue and just go along with the party, religion, nation or group they identify with, sound bite answers to complex issues are more attractive and validate their prejudices. Superficial talking points are mistaken for knowledge, moral condemnation is mistaken for reason and common sense, bigotry and paranoia are mistaken for trusting one’s gut, fears are mistaken for facts, faith is mistaken for evidence.

When those who care about freedom and human rights point out that what they are doing is cruel, unjust, and is in fact harming children, emotional plague bigots immediately call them pedophiles and groomers. Protecting children is their badge of righteousness. But none of what they’re doing is about protecting children: it’s about control.

Last year, CBS News reported that Christianity is declining and in a few decades may no longer be the majority religion. Since the wrath of God argument isn’t as persuasive anymore, puritanical bigots have to quadruple down on the protect-the-kids argument. It’s all they got folks. Without it, they’re nothing. I think this is one of the reasons why attacks on trans people and drag queens have become so vicious: they are highly visible targets and make convenient scapegoats. If people ever get wise to the fact that they are being conned out of their freedom and reject the pervasive cultural myth that children need to be protected from seeing, hearing, and knowing about anything sexual, they’re toast. It’s game over, done, finished, period, ended, sayonara, over and out.

This is the hill we must take. Without the protecting kids’ argument, these emotional plague bigots will be exposed for what they really are: a bunch of sexually repressed neurotic busybodies. Their political clout will be gone. All they will have left is their moral outrage. Make no mistake: unless the masses of the world stop buying into the protect-the-kids nonsense, these obnoxious emotional pests will never go away. They will never give up, and they will keep coming back.

A better way

On March 6, 1933, Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945), Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany, decreed: “We must exterminate these people root and branch; the homosexual must be eliminated.” Under Nazi rule, thousands of gay men were put in prisons and concentration camps where they were forced to wear a pink triangle to identify them. Many died and many were castrated.

Last March, at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Michael Knowles made this chilling statement:“There can be no middle way in dealing with transgenderism. It is all or nothing… for the good of society…transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely.”

Again, I ask you: is there really any difference?

Knowles’ convoluted logic for wanting to get rid of transgenderism is that it’s a lie and that we shouldn’t indulge lies, and because this particular lie will “take away the rights and customs of so many people.” Really? How? He also said that we should get rid of this “preposterous ideology” to deprogram the confused people who think they are trans. You know, this is really a great argument for eradicating religion from public life.

As a practicing Catholic, Knowles is part of a religion that believes in an invisible man who lives in the sky, talking snakes, the first woman being created from a guy’s rib, virgin births, people rising from the dead, a global flood that covered the Earth, for which there is no geological evidence, and that the Sun Moon and stars were created after the planet Earth. And let’s not forget that his church has killed and tortured millions of people over the centuries, has thousands of pedophiles in its priesthood, and tries to force its dogma on everyone via civil law to this day. But I don’t want to get rid of his religion by force, even if it is a “preposterous ideology,” because I believe in tolerance and freedom of choice.

As explained here, here, and here, transgender people have always been with us “in every recorded society from the ancient world onwards.” Only gender reassignment surgery is relatively new, as since the early 20^th century. LGBTQ people are among the ranks of famous scientists, inventors, artists, poets, playwrights, authors, actors, singers, explorers, social reformers, and world leaders. This planet would be a much poorer place without them. We should be celebrating a world of nuance and diversity, not trying to destroy it.

What frustrates me is that many anti-trans bigots can see through the COVID deception, but can’t see through the trans deception. Instead, they live in a world of demons, hobgoblins, evil spirits, perverts, and international satanic pedophile rings. Many LGBTQ supporters can see through the trans deception, but can’t see through the COVID deception. They live in a world of killer microbes and imaginary pandemics that only the high priests of science can save them from. For crying out loud people, we have enough real things to be afraid of without making up all of this imaginary shit. If we are to keep our liberty, we must learn to see through all deceptions, no matter what form they take.

How do you tell if there is some dark evil plot to take over the world or corrupt it? The methods used. In the case of COVID-19, the tyranny was real: lockdowns, forcing people to wear masks, along with other useless cult rituals, mandating people to take experimental drugs labeled as vaccines, etc. In the case of transgender people and drag queens, they are being subjected to punitive laws and other aggressive acts. The harassment and violence being directed at them is real. But transsexuals and drag queens aren’t trying to pass laws or do anything violent to anyone. Thus, the dark evil plot they are being accused of isn’t real.

In several states, lower courts have blocked bans on trans athletes and gender affirming care from going into effect because they violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Earlier this month, US District Court Judge Thomas Parker, a Trump appointee, struck down Tennessee’s anti-drag performance law because it violated the First Amendment. Of course, Tennessee will appeal, as will other states with similar laws. Until SCOUTS makes the final ruling, nothing is certain. But in Bostock v. Clayton County, 2020, SCOTUS ruled 6-3 that federal laws against sex discrimination apply to sexual orientation and transgender status. And earlier this year, in a 7-2 decision, refused to allow West Virginia to enforce its trans athlete ban while being decided in lower courts. Hopefully, SCOTUS will soon put an end to all of these horrible laws.

We also need to end qualified immunity for government officials. If legislators, governors and presidents pass unjust laws that harm people, they must be held accountable for it via being sued or criminally prosecuted.

And to those who are celebrating the passage of anti-trans laws, understand this: if the government can punish parents for bringing their kids to gay Pride parades and drag shows, it can punish parents for refusing to vaccinate their kids, put masks on their faces or whatever else, because you are setting the precedent (stare decisis) that the government owns you and your children. We live in a secular pluralistic society and, like it or not, children are going to be exposed to other lifestyles and might make choices that you don’t approve of. It is absurd to expect people to give up their right to free expression and to lead an alternative lifestyle so that your children, or anyone else’s children, won’t see or hear what you don’t want them to see or hear.

The Golden Rule says it all: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” All of you who refused to get the COVID shots and wear masks know what it’s like to be harassed and persecuted. You refused to go along with the COVID narrative and you were vilified for it. A lot of you lost your jobs, got arrested, were shunned by your family and friends. So, why would you want to do the same thing to transgender people? Why is it noble and pure to deprive them of their rights, but if your rights are violated, you get to invoke the wrath of God Almighty?

If you have to use violence, which includes getting laws passed, to impose your version of morality on people who aren’t doing anything violent, then you are wrong. Force is never justified unless someone is physically harming the person or property of another. Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) said it best: “It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand on its own.”

Stop hating folks. Talk to trans kids and their parents. Visit LGBTQ community centers. If there are none in your area, connect with them online via social media and websites. Go to gay Pride events and drag story hours without your kids and talk to the parents who bring them there. See if their reasons make sense. The more contact you have with something, the less you will fear it. And always remember: hate is toxic. It poisons the mind and mangles the soul. There is nothing moral about hate. You can’t build anything on hate. But you sure as hell can destroy an awful lot with hate.

We all have our ideas of what an ideal world would be. “If I were king,” as expressed in various songs and in film. But if we humans are to survive, we must let go of such selfish ambitions. Our only chance is to maintain a free and tolerant society, the trickiest, messiest, most confusing, and for some, the scariest one of all. But it’s the only one that preserves truth, justice, beauty, and all that is good about the human race.