davidthompson

The Pretending Can Get Competitive

Genevieve Gluck brings news from Scandinavia:

A man in Norway is sparking outrage on social media after he was sympathetically interviewed about his decision to begin identifying as a disabled woman... In the interview, [he] stated that he had always wished he had been born a woman who was paralysed from the waist down.

So not just a woman, but a woman in a wheelchair, which confers bonus points. So many intersections. So many opportunities to impose on others. The gentleman in question, Jørund Viktoria Alme, is a 53-year-old senior credit analyst for Oslo’s Handelsbanken. He is of course able-bodied, if a tad high-maintenance:

“In the same way that I experience being a woman in a man’s body, I experience that I should have been paralysed from the waist down. This is not a desire to be a burden on society. It is about the wheelchair being an aid for me to function in everyday life, both privately and at work,” Alme stated.

Unsurprisingly, many actually disabled people, whose use of wheelchairs is not recreational or a prop in some theatrical psychodrama, have aired their reservations about this new frontier in the world of make-believe identities. Among them, Noomi Alexandersen, a woman with cerebral palsy, who told Norway’s TV 2 that Mr Alme’s professed “identity” is an insult. Mr Alme, however, prefers to think of himself – an activity well-practised - as an activist of sorts, overcoming prejudice and facilitating “diversity and inclusion.” It’s all terribly selfless and heroic.

Oh wait. 

The Mystery That Is Me

Meanwhile, in theological news:

He describes drag as a spiritual experience that allows him to connect with God. “Drag allows me to process the mystery of myself, the mystery of God, the mystery of love, and the mystery of pain,” he said. “When I walk the streets in six-inch heels and wear four pounds of hair, double-stacked wigs, the power which lies within my mystery is released into the world.”

When not releasing his mystery into the world, associate pastor Mr Isaac Simmons, aka Ms Penny Cost, performs slam poetry.

Also, open thread.  

The Bedlamite Hustle

Christopher Rufo mingles with the dysmorphics of “Decolonizing Gender”: 

The panellists represented a wide range of idiosyncratic identities, expressed in a mixture of New Age and intersectional language—the more obscure and oppressed, the greater the status within the community. The main presenter, trans activist Malcolm Shanks, said he was a descendant of black slaves and Taíno tribesmen and “used to identify as gender fluid,” but has been “identifying more recently as a little bit more gaseous or plasma-like.”

Needless to say, the educational content is somewhat outlandish, often farcical and stupefying - essentially, a shit test for the neurotic, the credulous and the chronically pretentious. Mr Ganesha Gold Buffalo, for instance, a trans activist and prostitute, tells us that his expertise is rooted in “Waking up at four in the morning, five in the morning, every morning, to sounds of my ancestors screaming from outside my window, coming from the ground, coming from the earth.” His mind, we learn, “was decolonised” in nearby woods by howling “nature spirits.” Mr Buffalo, who identifies as many things, bemoans his “constant struggle under colonialism,” and his need for affirmation as a woman with a penis:

I one-hundred percent want to still be able to look in the mirror and see every part of myself as a woman, see every part of myself as a two-spirit trans woman, a beautiful being: my moustache, all of my facial hair, my untrimmed brows, my fat ass, my belly, my big dick, everything.

Other participants – again, self-styled educators – air equally challenging demands, including a belief that they should be addressed with seemingly random words, depending on whim and state of mind at any given time. “I want you to call me ‘Mommy,’ ‘Queen,’ ‘Daddy,’ if I want you to,” says Randy Ford, a transgender activist for the Lavender Rights Project, and whose pronouns are she, her, and goddess. Other terms of address include cyborg, unicorn, and Wakanda.

Along with the lists of stipulated pronouns and honorifics, and repeated demands for cash “reparations,” and tales of ghostly visitations by long-dead ancestors, the decolonisers of gender also share their extensive scientific knowledge. Specifically, that “There’s no such thing as male genes or female hormones or a male body.” You see, these things, which don’t exist, are merely diabolical constructs of the white devil. Hence the reparations, of course.

Videos of the bedlamites and their teachings can be found here.

The organisations mentioned in the piece all receive taxpayer funding, and all have programmes aimed at children.

Your Children Will Tell Me How Pretty I Am

Further to recent rumblings in the comments: 

“How do I look today?”

Because, naturally, it’s all about him.

Oh, and let’s not forget the educational importance of those TikTok leggings.

Needless to say, one of many.

Update, via the comments, where Joan adds,

“Shirt –‘we are activists’ - is from my school...”

Indeed. Note too that Mr Man-Leggings has apparently been showing the children in his class his TikTok account and inviting them to read the comments, and to disapprove of any commenters who find his behaviour… suboptimal. Because elementary school children are now to be participants in their teachers’ cross-dressing psychodramas.

And on a side note - a fashion tip, if you will - I think it’s generally best that small children can’t easily determine the size and state of their teachers’ genitals. But maybe that’s just me.

Also, open thread.

As A Woman, Just Like You, His Preferences Override Yours

Lifted from the comments - which you’re reading, of course - regarding this rather animated chap and his gushing sisterliness:  

And if you ladies would rather not find Camp Creepy Manic Guy in your bathroom or changing room, this is, he insists, proof of your own “internalised misogyny,” and it’s “up to you to unlearn” your foolish female ways. Because, you see, it’s “patriarchy” when women don’t want to get undressed in front of a mentally ill man. To avoid said “patriarchy,” you must submit. To him. 

He describes himself, modestly, as a “gender educator.”

Update, via the comments:

Chappie above, James, is apparently an “actress.” And “annoyingly hot.” As you can doubtless tell from his pretty nails, which he seems to regard as some ultimate measure of womanhood, and from the numerous videos of him parading around in his underwear while somewhat tightly wound. And remember, ladies, our “gender educator” only feels like a woman sometimes. So those visits to your bathrooms and changing rooms could go either way. A comfort, no doubt.

Update 2: 

Somewhat related, this.

Your Children Will Participate In My Psychodrama

I as a student did NOT want to know about my teachers’ personal lives.

From the comments following this, in which Mr Jo Brassington, a teacher of small children, considers it “so important” to parade around the classroom, looking “cute,” in painted nails and make-up: 

Update, via the comments:

Mr Brassington is, he says – or they says, because pronouns, obviously – that he’s “working to make educational spaces more emotionally honest.” And so, we’re expected to believe that “queer” teachers everywhere are somehow being suppressed and robbed of their energy unless they can start cross-dressing at work and telling small children about how screamingly fabulous they are. Such are the struggles of the modern primary-school educator.

Readers will note that the exhibitionist tendency and self-preoccupation are presented as an identity, something to be affirmed and applauded. But it’s not clear to me how one might differentiate an identity of this kind from a kink, or a mental health issue. And when you’re talking about adults having influence and authority over small children, it’s not an entirely trivial matter.

Do You See Clown-Self?

This just in. Clown-self pronouns:

In this situation, I would make sure that I exclusively use clown pronouns to talk about Cypress, so Cypress knows that I see clownself for who clown is.

Please update your files and lifestyles accordingly.

If you would like Maybe Burke, above, to provide “personal growth trainings” – say, regarding how you may speak when transgender people both are and aren’t present - by all means, knock yourself out.

Apparently, we non-transgender people, almost the entire human race, are supposed to embrace the prefix cis and use it continually, habitually, in order to suggest that being transgender is in no way atypical, niche, or anomalous. And to erase distinctions between, say, actual women and trans women, i.e., men with mental health problems. And this is said by someone bedevilled by urges to control what others may say, even in private, and even to control what they may think. Which itself is rather noteworthy. One might say anomalous.*

Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker. *Added via the comments. 

Maybe Not Deft, But Certainly Bold

The dishonesty, I mean.

Speaking of which, he’s doing it for the students, you know. And he sometimes turns up to class in full drag. To make it a “safe space.”

Update, via the comments:

Regarding the second item, Jen quips, “Liar, liar, pants on fire.”

Ah, but you see, it’s “a place for them, by them,” while clearly being all about him and entirely his idea, and entirely dependent on his preferences on any given day. So, sometimes it’s full drag, and sometimes just big earrings, nail polish and wacky tart shoes. To make the children feel “safe.” I somehow doubt that any pupils or parents who find this educator’s behaviour, shall we say, distracting or not entirely reassuring, will be indulged anything like as much as he expects to be.

Update 2:  

I suppose the above raises the question of whether you think schoolchildren should be compelled to participate, daily, as a captive audience, in a teacher’s gender-bending psychodrama. Complete with beard, make-up, and ‘fuck-me’ hooker shoes. What matters, we’re told, is that he gets to “look how I wanna look” during office hours, on other people’s time, while teaching other people’s children, and while supposedly setting an example of adult behaviour. And, luckily for him, farcical self-indulgence is just so woke, baby. “I’m here to recruit you,” quips he.

According to our progressive educator, the spectacle of him parading around the classroom in clownish make-up and women’s clothes, his beard offset with stiletto heels – which he just happens to enjoy wearing - will somehow create a “safe space” for gay schoolchildren. All of whom, apparently, aspire to be narcissistic cross-dressers with terrible taste. As someone who was once a gay schoolboy, back in a darker, more primitive age, I have to say, the sight of my chunky, rather stern German teacher striding about the classroom in Joker makeup and five-inch stilettos would not have been particularly affirming, no matter how many Pride flags he waved about while doing it.

Update 3:

A Non-Conformist Speaks

He’s 30, by the way. And a teacher, obviously.

When not telling the world that “professional dress codes are inherently racist, sexist, and rooted in white supremacy,” and failing to grade papers on time, a shortcoming that crops up repeatedly, Mr Segal likes to paint his nails, play dress-up in class, and talk about the state of his mental health. A topic also revisited more than once. 

Update, via the comments, where Alice asks,

Are there any actual grown-ups left in the teaching profession?

I’d imagined that one of the functions of dress codes and broader expectations of workplace professionalism is that they help to filter out the delinquent narcissists. People who just can’t get over themselves. Say, 30-year-old men who like to bemuse 12-year-olds by playing dress-up in class, announcing how “non-binary” they are, and painting their nails.

And not, in fact, to bolster some phantom “white supremacy.”

And again, as so often, the above does make one wonder about Mr Segal’s focus on the task at hand and his priorities, which seem to extend no further than himself. Or themself, I suppose. It doesn’t seem unfair to wonder if the children - the children he’s employed to educate - exist primarily as a captive and uncritical audience, there to applaud his self-preoccupation. The hashtags #tiktokteacher and #teachersoftiktok feature prominently, however, the only video I could find in which Mr Segal speaks of what the children in his care have learned in class – a topic you’d think might be mentioned occasionally - involved the children feeling obliged to regurgitate his contrived pronouns.

Readers may wish to reflect on what it must be like to be a man in his thirties whose regular purchases still include blue and green hair dye. Or a man in his thirties who regularly films himself miming to pop records and who uploads the results to TikTok in search of approval. As not-at-all-arrested educators do.

Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

A List Had Been Prepared

Applause would surely follow. 

I am a polyamorous, pansexual, lesbian and nonbinary transwoman. I’m also a furry. 

As someone quips in reply to this, “When you give yourself all the roles in the Discord server.” 

When not discussing his mental health issues - a go-to and seemingly inexhaustible topic - or deploying niche hashtags by the dozen, or modelling his assorted looks, from “hot girl summer” to “basic bitch autumn,” Mr Wildcat, quoted above, likes to remind viewers of how startlingly original he – sorry, e/er - is:

I realise my neo-pronouns are a little unique, mostly because… I came up with them. 

Readers will note that Mr Wildcat apparently finds it bewildering that someone – specifically, a female colleague - might not be entirely convinced by his supposedly unassailable womanly status:

She struggled with identifying my gender and it’s like… what? I wear low-cut tops to work.

“It was confusing. It confuses me.”

Update, via the comments:

Mind Control Not Yet Achieved, Weeping Ensues

Further to this lively exchange, a new form of “violence” has been conjured into being: 

 

Or, “Yes, you pretend what I tell you to pretend, but I can still tell that you’re pretending.”

Or, “Your perceptions are still your own and this outrages me.”

Update, via the comments:

Not, In Fact, Done With It

A bold use of the word gaslighting.

The damsel in question, aka “Commie DickGurl.”

It does, I think, inadvertently get to the nub of things, a common source of friction in this particular kind of drama. Which is to say, who’s gaslighting whom?

Update:

Very much related.

Via Darleen.