This is a one day story. There will be no sex change operation. There will be no pardon. Pvt. Manning will soon disappear into the bowels of Ft. Leavenworth and will not be heard from again for a number of years.
Human beings are extremely suggestible. It reminds me of those suicide cults. Jonestown, that other cult where everyone castrated himself. If transgenderism is pushed as the hot new thing across the country and the entire "free" world, millions of people will mutilate themselves. Maybe tens of millions. Right now there is a tendency to think "it's just a few freaks, it's not important." With a big enough media push this could become bigger than AIDS.
Think about eunuchs in past ages. Up until the 18th century lots of Italian parents castrated their kids, hoping that they'd become opera stars. Because of mass media this could become bigger than all of that.
The letter was just out there. "As I begin a new chapter of my life . . . " Dude, you're going to prison until your teeth fall out. That's not a new chapter of your life, that's a prison sentence.
"You were right. I was certain it was going to be one of reduced age of consent, polygamy or incest."
The average iSteve reader doesn't read much mainstream opinion because he violently disagrees with most of it. Steve disagrees with most of it too, but he also hopes (most likely in vain) to influence it. He can't influence elite opinion without knowing it well, so he follows closely. At first I didn't take the transgender thing seriously either, but it's gathering steam. I guess Steve was right.
Guess he has chosen Chelsea Clinton as his model of female beauty and brains? Could be that as a young man he so idolized Bill and Hillary he fantasized them as his parents.
When I first heard this late last night my first thought was, "So, a female trapped in a male's body was soooo miserable being male that he joined the US Armed Forces, still a male bastion. Yeah, uh huh.
Now is this going to cause an even greater riff between the Gs and the Ls and the Bs and the Ts?
Manning has always said, at least since he was arrested, that he was G-A-Y. Gays don't like trannies. (Yes, I know Trannies don't like to be called "Trannies," but I feel particularly rotten today).
So, will the Gs and the Ls, (especially the Gs--- probably the Ls don't care much) resent that Manning is actually a tranny who called himself g-a-y?
You know, those damn berets that they force those guys to wear are so ugly on everyone it must have been simply unbearable for him, whoops, "her," to don one each day. Maybe he (she) thought it would look better on a female. NOT!
Old dogma: There are no differences between men and women or such things as "male" or "female" characteristics; gender identity is just a meaningless social construct.
New dogma: The differences between men and women are so monumental that if you are born as one but identify as the other, society must do whatever it takes to accommodate and allow you to fulfill your gender identity.
If you believe on its face that Manning really made this statement, I've got a Siberian gulag to sell you.
All Enemies of the State must be portrayed uniformly to the slobbering masses in the most horrible colors. So Assange is a rapist, Manning suddenly a trannie (something most people are still repelled by). I wonder what Soviet-style smear is being prepared for Snowden? Pedo? Neo-Nazi? Molested his sister or mother?
They already pegged anyone interested in the Constitution as a potential terrorist.
I grew up thinking that Cpl. Klinger on MASH dressed up as a woman all the time because he wanted to be discharged as a homosexual. But later on I saw an episode where the all-knowing, all-wise shrink (I hated that guy) offered him a discharge as a homosexual, and he offendedly rejected it. He said something like, "I'm not homosexual, I'm crazy!" He wasn't pretending to be a gay cross-dresser, he was pretending to be a guy who thinks he's a woman. Because only a crazy person would think he is really a woman when he obviously is a man.
If Manning had been a spy 40 years ago, his best defense would have been insanity: "My client is crazy as a loon; he actually thinks he's a woman named Chelsea."
Like Zimmerman helping that family whose truck rolled over, this is just one more example of the rule that unlike fiction, real life doesn't have to keep to plausible stories.
I wouldn't discount the idea that this is a smear, but it is consistent with ofher stuff I've read and seen about Manning. I imagine that, having been arrested, mistreated, convicted, and sentenced to a very long prison term, he probably just figured he didn't have much to lose in telling people what he wanted to tell them. I mean, it's not like they're going to court martial him again for wanting to be a woman.
For somer reason, a lot of powerful people *really* want to make sure nobody tells you what they're up to, so much so that they're willing to go to great lengths to crucify anyone who does tell you. No doubt, this is because those powerful people are up to entirely good and sensible things,which simply might be misunderstood somehow.
I'd get a sex change if I was in his shoes, or, stilettos. If you're an effeminate white man, would you rather do 10-35 years in a men's prison or women's prison?
What Manning really wants is all the cache and political pull that comes with being "oppressed," and, these days, no one's more "oppressed" than teh gheys.
>For some reason, a lot of powerful people *really* want to make sure nobody tells you what they're up to, so much so that they're willing to go to great lengths to crucify anyone who does tell you. No doubt, this is because those powerful people are up to entirely good and sensible things<
Sorry, soft-pedaling doesn't mask your traitorous thoughts. You should be investigated. Expect the black van tonight and (if you're a public figure) the lurid stories about your disgusting private vices tomorrow. All hail America, and our President, Barack Obama!
[/sarcasm]
Someone once asked, "If the US is a police state, then how come we still have free speech on the internet, if not on the streets?"
The answer is, No one cares what people talk about on the internet. Neither Steve nor any other orthodoxy-questioner is going to make a dent in the totalitarian corporate power structure, period. Our neo-lords know we have no power and no real influence, so they permit us to squawk while their legions of snoops and acres of computers note for future use every word everyone types, a la Mao's Hundred Flowers Campaign.
Manning's conviction and the persecution of Snowden show us that things have changed a lot since Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers - that much is certain.
The next time we see freedom it will be the de facto freedom to be found in random places during the last stages of the implosion of the country.
This stunt is reminds me of thugs in prison who educate themselves on frivolous appeals and rearguard legal maneuvers or the pseudo-Masonry of Nation of Islam "science". It's going to help make the time pass by.
Most salient to me is how much the world has changed since I was a kid in NY. Glad that I'm older and will croak before these dudes/dudesses become the majority.
Marian McPartland has died. Knew her pretty well, grew up just down the street from her and her substance-addled husband, Jimmy, who was also a great talent, in his way. Argh.
Dave, I also came across that Jezebel article via a link at Deadspin. It's astonishing, as are the comments, at least the selection I read.
The certitude and self-righteousness on display are overwhelming.
Steve is right; this is the next battlezone in the culture war, and the warriors (actually, it seems, mostly warriorettes) are champing at the bit.
This case is just a precursor because Manning is too compromised a symbol, but there'll no doubt be someone more sympathetic coming along soon whose story will unleash the full kultur-krieg.
We need to pool up some money, go to one of those websites where the "furries" hang out, and find the biggest, craziest one we can.
Then we just pay him a couple thousand bucks to be the world's first furry activist. Have him demand loudly, publicly, and constantly that people recognize him by his furry identity and agree that he is, in fact, some kind of anthropomorphic animal, because he says he is.
Either it will become so ridiculous that all the PC garbage goes away for another ten years or so, or it provides us with lotsa laffs at the expense of the media.
Either way, it would be worth it.
And if that doesn't work? We move on to the "otherkin".
Of course, as soon as I saw that Manning wants to call himself Chelsea, I saw that Wikipedia had already been updated so that the official page on Manning lists him as Chelsea Manning now.
I guess we are now supposed to feel sorry since he is a poor misguided tranny now, that we are supposed to let him have his way, waste $100,000 of taxpayer money on his treatments, give him an easy time in jail and let him out of jail early. The US is just barreling down the side of the cliff at this point.
I have a feeling the Mannings and Trayvons of the world and their enablers are going to have quite a rude awakening when they discover that they get what they wished for.
When I read about Manning this morning, I guess in my cis-gendered white male privileged world I forgot for a minute that I was in the Twilight Zone of US 2013 where I am an evil cross between a retarded incestuous bucktoothed inbred and some who is worse than a murderer for questioning to myself whether Manning calling himself a woman makes him so, whether he had an ulterior motive to suddenly tranny himself up, and wondering why I must automatically and without question acquiesce to some crazy traitor's demands that I pay for his gender reassignment and view him as a helpless victim for willfully damaging the national security protecting myself and my family. If only we had big brother monitoring us every hour of every day by I don't know maybe our electronic communications, I'm sure we could soon stamp out the wickedness as what my evil white forefathers bred into the heart of those like me.
I remember reading once a historian, I think Edward Gibbon, hypothesised that a big meta-reason for the fall of the Roman empire was that the patricians were all raised by slaves and so lost the dynamism of their fathers. I find it some-what though not entirely convincing, just as I increasingly credit the decline of modern civilisation to the rise of the female educator. I would not be surprised if Manning were not a prime exhibit of this phenomenon.
That raises an interesting question. As that Jezebel post I linked to above makes clear, it's the mark of an uncouth idiot to mock the idea that a man can decide that he is really a woman and we should all acknowledge him as one. Why couldn't Manning decide to become black in a similar way? How is gender so instantly malleable and not race?
Slightly interesting in theory: plausible given his emotional problems (Takimag's Kathy Shaidle: that twink had no business being in the Army) but it looks too much like a bid for sympathy. (Didn't he watch reruns of 'M*A*S*H' growing up? It didn't work!) Since being gay didn't work enough to his advantage, he's taking it up a notch? Anyway, it doesn't matter. My line: even if he's a hero, he has to take the punishment for disobeying orders. 10 years and parole for good behavior sounds fair to me. All the Army has to do is make sure he isn't beaten up or killed in prison. He can pretend he thinks he's a cocker spaniel for what it's worth; he swore an oath upon enlisting and must honor that.
We need to pool up some money, go to one of those websites where the "furries" hang out, and find the biggest, craziest one we can.
Then we just pay him a couple thousand bucks to be the world's first furry activist. Have him demand loudly, publicly, and constantly that people recognize him by his furry identity and agree that he is, in fact, some kind of anthropomorphic animal, because he says he is.
Either it will become so ridiculous that all the PC garbage goes away for another ten years or so, or it provides us with lotsa laffs at the expense of the media.
Alas, the latter is the best case scenario. Somebody over at My Posting Career commented recently that (I paraphrase) a variant of Moore's Law was now operating on leftie rage, such that the crazy is doubling every 18 months. Furries? Ha, we probably would have been grateful to be force-fed so innocent a new cause, once the next "civil rights issue of our age" goes live. I hesitate even to hazard a prediction on what it will be, not wishing to rouse nemesis, or give the usual suspects any ideas.
I overhead the Manning case being discussed on some NPR call-in program this morning. A veritable new Rosa Parks had appeared, I gathered. Comrades, rejoice! Let us now earnestly strive to root out our insensitive misuse of pronouns in referring to Miss Manning. (It is of course taken as given that dude thinking he's a lady is the most normal thing in the world, which we should all respect.)
I'm tolerant of gays. Considering that I'm so often accused of trying to hasten their elimination, that should count for something.
But I'm not so tolerant of the transgendered. They seem to me to be nothing but mischief makers.
Leviticus argues against gayness but is silent (I think) on transgender issues. Does that mean that being transgender is OK? Or does it mean that attacking transgenders is OK? Oh dear, what to do?
I was at a public orgy in San Francisco a few years back where I was propositioned by a woman (or so I thought). It was a transgender man who proudly told ]me he had had "the operation". He(it) was bewildered and offended that I should reject him.
That's the problem. Many transgendered men want to fool normal men into accepting them as a woman at least for a while. They are not innocents who only want to be left in peace. They want to commit a fraud on normal men. It's a kind of game for them.
Fortunately most of transgender men look ridiculous dressed up as women. The Tenderloin district always seem to have these big hairy black men dressed in tight dresses and stumbling around on four inch heels. But some are not so easy to spot.
I remember a dozen years ago hearing a show on public radio about the plight of the transgendered. This guy was making a case for public funding for men to get their vocal cords shortened. He recounted how he looked feminine enough to interest straight men but that his deep masculine voice gave the game away.
He wanted to fool straight men as to his gender and he expected the taxpayers to pay for it.
"Old dogma: There are no differences between men and women or such things as 'male' or 'female' characteristics; gender identity is just a meaningless social construct.
"New dogma: The differences between men and women are so monumental that if you are born as one but identify as the other, society must do whatever it takes to accommodate and allow you to fulfill your gender identity."
Precisely so. I mean, talk about the "contradictions inherent in the system"!
Surely the intelligent liberal response to some dude who wants to have his genitalia cut off so he can pretend to be a woman ought to be something like this:
"You seem to be suffering from homophobia, and you need to get over it. There's nothing wrong with being physically male while at the same time having feelings traditionally associated, by unenlightened people, with females - up to & including sexual attraction to other males. If you disagree, you're in need of therapy - not surgery."
Precisely so. I mean, talk about the "contradictions inherent in the system"!
Surely the intelligent liberal response to some dude who wants to have his genitalia cut off so he can pretend to be a woman ought to be something like this:
"You seem to be suffering from homophobia, and you need to get over it. There's nothing wrong with being physically male while at the same time having feelings traditionally associated, by unenlightened people, with females - up to & including sexual attraction to other males. If you disagree, you're in need of therapy - not surgery."
It's interesting to me that when I was a kid (1990s), the Consies (at least via the Consie mainstream media) were all like
"Well, it's we're not sure about whether it's a good idea for some effeminate little gay kid to take drugs and surgery to become more pseudo-female. On the one hand, religiousness and procreation reasons, on the other hand, it's in line with men being men and women being women and conforming to gender norms, rather than that disgusting homo gender stereotype subverting culture, where it is accepted for men to be effeminate and have sex with men."
Whereas now us Conservatives seem to be going more into the dimension of "Gay is OK, but some effeminate little boy (a la Manning, basically) changing his body in ways that might make him more attractive to and marry straight men (rather than having tons of promiscuous, uncommitted sex with other effeminate gay men after dancing in sweaty nightclubs) is really wrong!"
It seems almost like the opinion is changing depending on how much society's authorities approve of homosexuality.
That raises an interesting question. As that Jezebel post I linked to above makes clear, it's the mark of an uncouth idiot to mock the idea that a man can decide that he is really a woman and we should all acknowledge him as one. Why couldn't Manning decide to become black in a similar way? How is gender so instantly malleable and not race?
Hmmm. Yes, interesting question.
The basis of people being OK with transgenders, mostly is that people think
1) Being male or female are basic mental qualities and natures which member of society need to have to live functional lives, and is not a quality which makes a person less or more able to have a functioning life and contribute to society.
2) It's plausible that a male could have a female mind (and vice versa), because there is an essential maleness and femaleness to the mind that really exists and can plausibly mismatch, or there is no essential nature and people can construct their internal maleness or femaleness.
3) Men or women are socially and physically is equal, so people aren't lessening themselves if they socially and physically are one or the other, or go from one to the other. There's no harm or lessening in socially and physically becoming one or the other. And the way to live life best is to have a social and physical being which matches the internal self.
4) Its not a problem to reinforce (via physical intervention or behavioural change) or signal the idea that someone has a male or female nature, even if this mismatches with their presentation, because these are real, existing mental things and the body is the servant of the mind and self and can be reshaped to fit the mind as seen fit
They don't really think these things in the same way about human races or species (Dolphins or whatever), or amputees, or Bill Gates's progeny, etc. There's no Bill Gates son essentialism that can become mismatched with someone who isn't Bill Gates son (and no one would finds this believable except extreme believers in odd kinds of reincarnation), no Black nature (again, only odd people who believe both in reincarnation and that Blacks and Whites have different "souls" would likely believe in this), etc.
Which is why interventions to change those characteristics of a person are not supported. Those characteristics exist as social constructs if at all as characteristics, and are not really seen as desirable or essential and basic rights.
When people object to transgenders, they are effectively objecting to and striking against one or more of the above propositions (everyone or anyone has a real gender, males can have a female gender and vice versa, men and women are equal and the body can be shaped to served the mind) to the minds of most perceivers, and should therefore be careful in how they phrase their objections, if they are in fact not.
Conservative folk generally aim their objection at 2), that men can have a female gender and vice versa, but this is often not helped by their often dismissing men who are non-gender conforming as girls or girly or women who are non-gender conforming as mannish (which rather defeats the point of their objections) and the reality that there are functionally quite a lot of transsexuals who function quite well as the opposite gender (sans reproduction).
Because of mass media this could become bigger than all of that.
Yes. I do think a kind of "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" phenomenon explains the quick surrender to SSM. And I do worry it could happen with "transsexualism" as well.
When people object to transgenders, they are effectively objecting to and striking against one or more of the above propositions (everyone or anyone has a real gender, males can have a female gender and vice versa,...."
You've really swallowed all that nonsense? The very notion of "gender" is total bulls**t. It is the work of forty years of left-wing sexual-marxist agit-prop. There is no such thing as "gender" outside of a grammar book. What there is, is sex. There are two of them - male and female.
Gays are a few percent of the population (2-3%, I think). So there is a relatively big constituency for gay marriage and gay rights. But there is a much, much smaller fraction of people who want to change genders, cross-dress, whatever. So this can become a big cause in the media, but it's just not going to ahve the kind of legs that gay marriage does, because rheee just aren't enough constituents.
Further, gays can actually have weddings and marriages and kids and joint property and the rest. But the technology just isn't up to the job of making a woman into a man. Even a billionaire transsexual is going to end up looking like a man dressed up as a woman, with a hundred subtle and not-so-subtle clues signaling that she started life out as a he. The whole process looks like a horror show to me. So again, pretty limited appeal.
I mean really..
ReplyDeletewhen will Onion just call it quits.
PS. When will we have a president who starts out as a man but leaves office as a woman??
PROGRESS!!!!!
Why not change the name to Bradley Womanning?
ReplyDeleteThis is a one day story. There will be no sex change operation. There will be no pardon. Pvt. Manning will soon disappear into the bowels of Ft. Leavenworth and will not be heard from again for a number of years.
ReplyDeleteYou were right. I was certain it was going to be one of reduced age of consent, polygamy or incest.
ReplyDeletePeople will twist and distort themselves in bizarre and goofy ways in order to win entrance into the sacred victim classes.
ReplyDeleteWell, this is the new frontier in civil rights.
ReplyDeleteThat's so gay.
ReplyDeleteEven if he does not get the hormone treatments, you can count on him ending up as someone's girlfriend in prison.
ReplyDelete"Why not change the name to Bradley Womanning?"
ReplyDeleteThe first time I've ever actually laughed out load at a comment!
Human beings are extremely suggestible. It reminds me of those suicide cults. Jonestown, that other cult where everyone castrated himself. If transgenderism is pushed as the hot new thing across the country and the entire "free" world, millions of people will mutilate themselves. Maybe tens of millions. Right now there is a tendency to think "it's just a few freaks, it's not important." With a big enough media push this could become bigger than AIDS.
ReplyDeleteThink about eunuchs in past ages. Up until the 18th century lots of Italian parents castrated their kids, hoping that they'd become opera stars. Because of mass media this could become bigger than all of that.
Could he be an extreme beta, heterosexual, and all this sex change stuff a ploy to get in with the women?
ReplyDeleteThe letter was just out there. "As I begin a new chapter of my life . . . " Dude, you're going to prison until your teeth fall out. That's not a new chapter of your life, that's a prison sentence.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm proud to be a transgender femme,
ReplyDeletewhere at least I know I'm she.
And I won't forget the AIDS martyrs,
who gave that right to me.
"You were right. I was certain it was going to be one of reduced age of consent, polygamy or incest."
ReplyDeleteThe average iSteve reader doesn't read much mainstream opinion because he violently disagrees with most of it. Steve disagrees with most of it too, but he also hopes (most likely in vain) to influence it. He can't influence elite opinion without knowing it well, so he follows closely. At first I didn't take the transgender thing seriously either, but it's gathering steam. I guess Steve was right.
Guess he has chosen Chelsea Clinton as his model of female beauty and brains? Could be that as a young man he so idolized Bill and Hillary he fantasized them as his parents.
ReplyDeleteBill and Hillary must be so proud.
Just when I think the Arab peoples can't get any more f-ed up than they are, I see stuff like this and realized one reason they hate us so.
ReplyDeletePot, meet Kettle.
When I first heard this late last night my first thought was, "So, a female trapped in a male's body was soooo miserable being male that he joined the US Armed Forces, still a male bastion. Yeah, uh huh.
ReplyDeleteCalling J. Michael Bailey....
Now is this going to cause an even greater riff between the Gs and the Ls and the Bs and the Ts?
ReplyDeleteManning has always said, at least since he was arrested, that he was G-A-Y. Gays don't like trannies. (Yes, I know Trannies don't like to be called "Trannies," but I feel particularly rotten today).
So, will the Gs and the Ls, (especially the Gs--- probably the Ls don't care much) resent that Manning is actually a tranny who called himself g-a-y?
You know, those damn berets that they force those guys to wear are so ugly on everyone it must have been simply unbearable for him, whoops, "her," to don one each day. Maybe he (she) thought it would look better on a female. NOT!
Old dogma: There are no differences between men and women or such things as "male" or "female" characteristics; gender identity is just a meaningless social construct.
ReplyDeleteNew dogma: The differences between men and women are so monumental that if you are born as one but identify as the other, society must do whatever it takes to accommodate and allow you to fulfill your gender identity.
Bill and Hillary must be so proud.
ReplyDeleteBill Clinton: If I had a daughter, she'd look just like her.
What I want to know: after the op, will Julian Assange look her up?
If you believe on its face that Manning really made this statement, I've got a Siberian gulag to sell you.
ReplyDeleteAll Enemies of the State must be portrayed uniformly to the slobbering masses in the most horrible colors. So Assange is a rapist, Manning suddenly a trannie (something most people are still repelled by). I wonder what Soviet-style smear is being prepared for Snowden? Pedo? Neo-Nazi? Molested his sister or mother?
They already pegged anyone interested in the Constitution as a potential terrorist.
We will never hear from the real Manning again.
I grew up thinking that Cpl. Klinger on MASH dressed up as a woman all the time because he wanted to be discharged as a homosexual. But later on I saw an episode where the all-knowing, all-wise shrink (I hated that guy) offered him a discharge as a homosexual, and he offendedly rejected it. He said something like, "I'm not homosexual, I'm crazy!" He wasn't pretending to be a gay cross-dresser, he was pretending to be a guy who thinks he's a woman. Because only a crazy person would think he is really a woman when he obviously is a man.
ReplyDeleteIf Manning had been a spy 40 years ago, his best defense would have been insanity: "My client is crazy as a loon; he actually thinks he's a woman named Chelsea."
So who's crazy now?
You are all reacting to this news the wrong way: How not to react to the news that Manning is transgender.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous asked:
ReplyDelete"PS. When will we have a president who starts out as a man but leaves office as a woman??"
Anonymous answered:
When Hillary Clinton is elected.
"Roast me! Hang me! Do whatever you please," said Brer Rabbit. "Only please, Brer Fox, please don't throw me into the briar patch."
ReplyDeleteDoesn't the world have enough ugly women? Do we have to start manufacturing more at taxpayer's expense?
ReplyDeleteDude, you're going to prison until your teeth fall out.
According to a news report I heard today, with time served and good behavior, Womanning will be eligible for parole in 6.5 years.
Like Zimmerman helping that family whose truck rolled over, this is just one more example of the rule that unlike fiction, real life doesn't have to keep to plausible stories.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't discount the idea that this is a smear, but it is consistent with ofher stuff I've read and seen about Manning. I imagine that, having been arrested, mistreated, convicted, and sentenced to a very long prison term, he probably just figured he didn't have much to lose in telling people what he wanted to tell them. I mean, it's not like they're going to court martial him again for wanting to be a woman.
For somer reason, a lot of powerful people *really* want to make sure nobody tells you what they're up to, so much so that they're willing to go to great lengths to crucify anyone who does tell you. No doubt, this is because those powerful people are up to entirely good and sensible things,which simply might be misunderstood somehow.
David, Manning was clear about this in his chat-logs with Adrian Lamo. His supporters are familiar with this. It's not government disinformation.
ReplyDeleteI'd get a sex change if I was in his shoes, or, stilettos. If you're an effeminate white man, would you rather do 10-35 years in a men's prison or women's prison?
ReplyDeleteIt's funny to remark on how a very liberal TV show like M*A*S*H from 30-40 years ago would now elicit the revulsion of all true modern liberals.
ReplyDeleteI mean, Cpl. Klinger claiming that dressing up in women's clothes ipso facto made him crazy?
What Manning really wants is all the cache and political pull that comes with being "oppressed," and, these days, no one's more "oppressed" than teh gheys.
ReplyDeleteIf he wants extra pull, he'll convert to Judaism.
>For some reason, a lot of powerful people *really* want to make sure nobody tells you what they're up to, so much so that they're willing to go to great lengths to crucify anyone who does tell you. No doubt, this is because those powerful people are up to entirely good and sensible things<
ReplyDeleteSorry, soft-pedaling doesn't mask your traitorous thoughts. You should be investigated. Expect the black van tonight and (if you're a public figure) the lurid stories about your disgusting private vices tomorrow. All hail America, and our President, Barack Obama!
[/sarcasm]
Someone once asked, "If the US is a police state, then how come we still have free speech on the internet, if not on the streets?"
The answer is, No one cares what people talk about on the internet. Neither Steve nor any other orthodoxy-questioner is going to make a dent in the totalitarian corporate power structure, period. Our neo-lords know we have no power and no real influence, so they permit us to squawk while their legions of snoops and acres of computers note for future use every word everyone types, a la Mao's Hundred Flowers Campaign.
Manning's conviction and the persecution of Snowden show us that things have changed a lot since Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers - that much is certain.
The next time we see freedom it will be the de facto freedom to be found in random places during the last stages of the implosion of the country.
I now return you to your prison-rape jokes.
This stunt is reminds me of thugs in prison who educate themselves on frivolous appeals and rearguard legal maneuvers or the pseudo-Masonry of Nation of Islam "science". It's going to help make the time pass by.
ReplyDeleteMost salient to me is how much the world has changed since I was a kid in NY. Glad that I'm older and will croak before these dudes/dudesses become the majority.
ReplyDeleteMarian McPartland has died. Knew her pretty well, grew up just down the street from her and her substance-addled husband, Jimmy, who was also a great talent, in his way. Argh.
Dave, I also came across that Jezebel article via a link at Deadspin. It's astonishing, as are the comments, at least the selection I read.
ReplyDeleteThe certitude and self-righteousness on display are overwhelming.
Steve is right; this is the next battlezone in the culture war, and the warriors (actually, it seems, mostly warriorettes) are champing at the bit.
This case is just a precursor because Manning is too compromised a symbol, but there'll no doubt be someone more sympathetic coming along soon whose story will unleash the full kultur-krieg.
Gentlemen, you know what needs to be done.
ReplyDeleteWe need to pool up some money, go to one of those websites where the "furries" hang out, and find the biggest, craziest one we can.
Then we just pay him a couple thousand bucks to be the world's first furry activist. Have him demand loudly, publicly, and constantly that people recognize him by his furry identity and agree that he is, in fact, some kind of anthropomorphic animal, because he says he is.
Either it will become so ridiculous that all the PC garbage goes away for another ten years or so, or it provides us with lotsa laffs at the expense of the media.
Either way, it would be worth it.
And if that doesn't work? We move on to the "otherkin".
"And I'm proud to be a transgender femme,
ReplyDeletewhere at least I know I'm she.
And I won't forget the AIDS martyrs,
who gave that right to me."
Comment of the Year nominee right there.
Of course, as soon as I saw that Manning wants to call himself Chelsea, I saw that Wikipedia had already been updated so that the official page on Manning lists him as Chelsea Manning now.
ReplyDeleteI guess we are now supposed to feel sorry since he is a poor misguided tranny now, that we are supposed to let him have his way, waste $100,000 of taxpayer money on his treatments, give him an easy time in jail and let him out of jail early. The US is just barreling down the side of the cliff at this point.
I have a feeling the Mannings and Trayvons of the world and their enablers are going to have quite a rude awakening when they discover that they get what they wished for.
When I read about Manning this morning, I guess in my cis-gendered white male privileged world I forgot for a minute that I was in the Twilight Zone of US 2013 where I am an evil cross between a retarded incestuous bucktoothed inbred and some who is worse than a murderer for questioning to myself whether Manning calling himself a woman makes him so, whether he had an ulterior motive to suddenly tranny himself up, and wondering why I must automatically and without question acquiesce to some crazy traitor's demands that I pay for his gender reassignment and view him as a helpless victim for willfully damaging the national security protecting myself and my family. If only we had big brother monitoring us every hour of every day by I don't know maybe our electronic communications, I'm sure we could soon stamp out the wickedness as what my evil white forefathers bred into the heart of those like me.
ReplyDelete>David, Manning was clear about this in his chat-logs with Adrian Lamo. His supporters are familiar with this. It's not government disinformation.<
ReplyDeleteThanks, but remember: Lamo turned him in. You really believe Lamo didn't compliantly invent some info to get a good deal?
I don't believe any official statement related to this case, or the cases of Assange or Snowden.
I woke up, he was a Chelsea Manning, and the first thing that I heard, was my cellmate snoring next to me and the smell of jailhouse turds...
ReplyDeleteI remember reading once a historian, I think Edward Gibbon, hypothesised that a big meta-reason for the fall of the Roman empire was that the patricians were all raised by slaves and so lost the dynamism of their fathers. I find it some-what though not entirely convincing, just as I increasingly credit the decline of modern civilisation to the rise of the female educator. I would not be surprised if Manning were not a prime exhibit of this phenomenon.
ReplyDeleteThere's probably 2 dozen screenwriters working on this right now.
ReplyDelete2 to 1 there's an Oscar in this story, or at least an Emmy, in the next 10 years.
Get with that South African Sci Fi dude Steve and show us whats up!
"Gay is the new Black."
ReplyDeleteThat raises an interesting question. As that Jezebel post I linked to above makes clear, it's the mark of an uncouth idiot to mock the idea that a man can decide that he is really a woman and we should all acknowledge him as one. Why couldn't Manning decide to become black in a similar way? How is gender so instantly malleable and not race?
In Manning's wikipedia article, he's now referred to as a she and as Chelsea E. Manning (E. is apparently for Edward). This is just insane.
ReplyDeleteAll I can say is that his parents must be very proud of him.
ReplyDeleteSlightly interesting in theory: plausible given his emotional problems (Takimag's Kathy Shaidle: that twink had no business being in the Army) but it looks too much like a bid for sympathy. (Didn't he watch reruns of 'M*A*S*H' growing up? It didn't work!) Since being gay didn't work enough to his advantage, he's taking it up a notch? Anyway, it doesn't matter. My line: even if he's a hero, he has to take the punishment for disobeying orders. 10 years and parole for good behavior sounds fair to me. All the Army has to do is make sure he isn't beaten up or killed in prison. He can pretend he thinks he's a cocker spaniel for what it's worth; he swore an oath upon enlisting and must honor that.
ReplyDeleteInteresting how the text of the article (despite the title) takes pains to avoid using pronouns to refer to Manning.
ReplyDeleteI've decided that I'm Bill Gates' son and heir to his fortune. Genetically, that's less of a stretch than Bradley Manning deciding his a woman.
ReplyDeleteBill Clinton: If I had a daughter, she'd look just like her.
ReplyDeleteThe picture of Bradley Manning in a wig and lipstick actually looks cuter than most pictures of Chelsea Clinton.
We need to pool up some money, go to one of those websites where the "furries" hang out, and find the biggest, craziest one we can.
ReplyDeleteThen we just pay him a couple thousand bucks to be the world's first furry activist. Have him demand loudly, publicly, and constantly that people recognize him by his furry identity and agree that he is, in fact, some kind of anthropomorphic animal, because he says he is.
Either it will become so ridiculous that all the PC garbage goes away for another ten years or so, or it provides us with lotsa laffs at the expense of the media.
Alas, the latter is the best case scenario. Somebody over at My Posting Career commented recently that (I paraphrase) a variant of Moore's Law was now operating on leftie rage, such that the crazy is doubling every 18 months. Furries? Ha, we probably would have been grateful to be force-fed so innocent a new cause, once the next "civil rights issue of our age" goes live. I hesitate even to hazard a prediction on what it will be, not wishing to rouse nemesis, or give the usual suspects any ideas.
I overhead the Manning case being discussed on some NPR call-in program this morning. A veritable new Rosa Parks had appeared, I gathered. Comrades, rejoice! Let us now earnestly strive to root out our insensitive misuse of pronouns in referring to Miss Manning. (It is of course taken as given that dude thinking he's a lady is the most normal thing in the world, which we should all respect.)
I'm tolerant of gays. Considering that I'm so often accused of trying to hasten their elimination, that should count for something.
ReplyDeleteBut I'm not so tolerant of the transgendered. They seem to me to be nothing but mischief makers.
Leviticus argues against gayness but is silent (I think) on transgender issues. Does that mean that being transgender is OK? Or does it mean that attacking transgenders is OK? Oh dear, what to do?
I was at a public orgy in San Francisco a few years back where I was propositioned by a woman (or so I thought). It was a transgender man who proudly told ]me he had had "the operation". He(it) was bewildered and offended that I should reject him.
That's the problem. Many transgendered men want to fool normal men into accepting them as a woman at least for a while. They are not innocents who only want to be left in peace. They want to commit a fraud on normal men. It's a kind of game for them.
Fortunately most of transgender men look ridiculous dressed up as women. The Tenderloin district always seem to have these big hairy black men dressed in tight dresses and stumbling around on four inch heels. But some are not so easy to spot.
I remember a dozen years ago hearing a show on public radio about the plight of the transgendered. This guy was making a case for public funding for men to get their vocal cords shortened. He recounted how he looked feminine enough to interest straight men but that his deep masculine voice gave the game away.
He wanted to fool straight men as to his gender and he expected the taxpayers to pay for it.
That's NPR in SF.
Albertosaurus
@anonymous 5:48 p.m.:
ReplyDelete"Old dogma: There are no differences between men and women or such things as 'male' or 'female' characteristics; gender identity is just a meaningless social construct.
"New dogma: The differences between men and women are so monumental that if you are born as one but identify as the other, society must do whatever it takes to accommodate and allow you to fulfill your gender identity."
Precisely so. I mean, talk about the "contradictions inherent in the system"!
Surely the intelligent liberal response to some dude who wants to have his genitalia cut off so he can pretend to be a woman ought to be something like this:
"You seem to be suffering from homophobia, and you need to get over it. There's nothing wrong with being physically male while at the same time having feelings traditionally associated, by unenlightened people, with females - up to & including sexual attraction to other males. If you disagree, you're in need of therapy - not surgery."
the all-knowing, all-wise shrink (I hated that guy)
ReplyDeleteHey, you were supposed to really, really like that guy.
Funny how they miss big like that isn't it.
In response to "How not to react to the news that Manning is transgender."
ReplyDeleteIf some dude takes hormone therapy to turn himself into a female sheep, do we have to call him a "ewe"?
Slate also refuses to call the Washington NFL franchise by its official trademarked name now
ReplyDeletePrecisely so. I mean, talk about the "contradictions inherent in the system"!
ReplyDeleteSurely the intelligent liberal response to some dude who wants to have his genitalia cut off so he can pretend to be a woman ought to be something like this:
"You seem to be suffering from homophobia, and you need to get over it. There's nothing wrong with being physically male while at the same time having feelings traditionally associated, by unenlightened people, with females - up to & including sexual attraction to other males. If you disagree, you're in need of therapy - not surgery."
It's interesting to me that when I was a kid (1990s), the Consies (at least via the Consie mainstream media) were all like
"Well, it's we're not sure about whether it's a good idea for some effeminate little gay kid to take drugs and surgery to become more pseudo-female. On the one hand, religiousness and procreation reasons, on the other hand, it's in line with men being men and women being women and conforming to gender norms, rather than that disgusting homo gender stereotype subverting culture, where it is accepted for men to be effeminate and have sex with men."
Whereas now us Conservatives seem to be going more into the dimension of "Gay is OK, but some effeminate little boy (a la Manning, basically) changing his body in ways that might make him more attractive to and marry straight men (rather than having tons of promiscuous, uncommitted sex with other effeminate gay men after dancing in sweaty nightclubs) is really wrong!"
It seems almost like the opinion is changing depending on how much society's authorities approve of homosexuality.
That raises an interesting question. As that Jezebel post I linked to above makes clear, it's the mark of an uncouth idiot to mock the idea that a man can decide that he is really a woman and we should all acknowledge him as one. Why couldn't Manning decide to become black in a similar way? How is gender so instantly malleable and not race?
ReplyDeleteHmmm. Yes, interesting question.
The basis of people being OK with transgenders, mostly is that people think
1) Being male or female are basic mental qualities and natures which member of society need to have to live functional lives, and is not a quality which makes a person less or more able to have a functioning life and contribute to society.
2) It's plausible that a male could have a female mind (and vice versa), because there is an essential maleness and femaleness to the mind that really exists and can plausibly mismatch, or there is no essential nature and people can construct their internal maleness or femaleness.
3) Men or women are socially and physically is equal, so people aren't lessening themselves if they socially and physically are one or the other, or go from one to the other. There's no harm or lessening in socially and physically becoming one or the other. And the way to live life best is to have a social and physical being which matches the internal self.
4) Its not a problem to reinforce (via physical intervention or behavioural change) or signal the idea that someone has a male or female nature, even if this mismatches with their presentation, because these are real, existing mental things and the body is the servant of the mind and self and can be reshaped to fit the mind as seen fit
They don't really think these things in the same way about human races or species (Dolphins or whatever), or amputees, or Bill Gates's progeny, etc. There's no Bill Gates son essentialism that can become mismatched with someone who isn't Bill Gates son (and no one would finds this believable except extreme believers in odd kinds of reincarnation), no Black nature (again, only odd people who believe both in reincarnation and that Blacks and Whites have different "souls" would likely believe in this), etc.
Which is why interventions to change those characteristics of a person are not supported. Those characteristics exist as social constructs if at all as characteristics, and are not really seen as desirable or essential and basic rights.
When people object to transgenders, they are effectively objecting to and striking against one or more of the above propositions (everyone or anyone has a real gender, males can have a female gender and vice versa, men and women are equal and the body can be shaped to served the mind) to the minds of most perceivers, and should therefore be careful in how they phrase their objections, if they are in fact not.
Conservative folk generally aim their objection at 2), that men can have a female gender and vice versa, but this is often not helped by their often dismissing men who are non-gender conforming as girls or girly or women who are non-gender conforming as mannish (which rather defeats the point of their objections) and the reality that there are functionally quite a lot of transsexuals who function quite well as the opposite gender (sans reproduction).
Because of mass media this could become bigger than all of that.
ReplyDeleteYes. I do think a kind of "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" phenomenon explains the quick surrender to SSM. And I do worry it could happen with "transsexualism" as well.
"Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteWhen people object to transgenders, they are effectively objecting to and striking against one or more of the above propositions (everyone or anyone has a real gender, males can have a female gender and vice versa,...."
You've really swallowed all that nonsense? The very notion of "gender" is total bulls**t. It is the work of forty years of left-wing sexual-marxist agit-prop. There is no such thing as "gender" outside of a grammar book. What there is, is sex. There are two of them - male and female.
She should get years added to her sentence for lying to the recruiters by misrepresenting herself as a man.
ReplyDeletePvt. Manning will soon disappear into the bowels of Ft. Leavenworth and will not be heard from again for a number of years.
Or perhaps the opposite. Maybe he will like being in jail!
Maybe he will like being in jail!
ReplyDeleteShades of Mamet's Edmond.
Gays are a few percent of the population (2-3%, I think). So there is a relatively big constituency for gay marriage and gay rights. But there is a much, much smaller fraction of people who want to change genders, cross-dress, whatever. So this can become a big cause in the media, but it's just not going to ahve the kind of legs that gay marriage does, because rheee just aren't enough constituents.
ReplyDeleteFurther, gays can actually have weddings and marriages and kids and joint property and the rest. But the technology just isn't up to the job of making a woman into a man. Even a billionaire transsexual is going to end up looking like a man dressed up as a woman, with a hundred subtle and not-so-subtle clues signaling that she started life out as a he. The whole process looks like a horror show to me. So again, pretty limited appeal.