How not to pass as trans

Our modern world and its peculiar obsessions have given rise to many new words and phrases. One which I came across recently has been giving me cause for thought: ‘transpassing’.

This term refers not to a new fad of trespassing transsexuals, but instead to the name of an Internet forum I came across (best not to ask how).

Within said forum, people trying to look the opposite of their actual gender post selfies and ask whether they are successfully ‘passing’ or not, hence transpassing.

The very asking the question should be answer enough. After all, if I ‘identify’ as various things it is because I am those things. I do not have the requisite (and unobtainable) experience to ‘identify’ as something I am not, though I may indeed empathise with the target of my curiosity.

An identity is not asserted, it is agreed upon by consensus. Yet the headlong rush into maniacal individualism has blinded such people to the reality of the world.

Let us think of an example. Although not unfit, I am not the fastest man in the world. My claiming to be so would not be enough for that title is bestowed according to a settled and defined mechanism. Insistence alone is not enough.

Moreover, although I may greatly admire the white-faced whistling duck – a handsome mallard to be found across South America and Africa – few would be convinced were I to claim to be one. My lack of a long, grey bill is a bit of a giveaway, as is my inability to lay eggs.

Such blatantly obvious facts no longer seem to matter, however. The cult of self-assertion and ‘lived truths’ has taken priority.

Not, however, that such an observation is mine. Listening to Jordan Peterson a while ago implanted the idea in my head and the point keeps being hammered into my squidgy skill. The idea found even more fertile ground, however, living as I do in a university town. As such, it has a higher tranny-per-capita than most places. My tranny-dar has gone into overdrive, one might say.

Less than an hour before writing these words I took a trip to the supermarket. In said shop were two blokes: one ebony, one ivory. The latter had his hair long, make-up and earrings, his mid-rift showing and was wearing a skirt. The acne scars of puberty and Adam’s apple – not to mention his overtly masculine face – gave the game away. The former, significantly overweight, was similarly unconvincing in his skirt and facial hair, accompanied by odeur corporelle.

‘Transpassing’ they certainly were not.

Elsewhere, a friend of a friend – a man in his mid-60s – decides to become a ‘woman’, choosing the unfortunate name ‘Amanda’ (a man, duh!). Describing himself online as ‘a transgendered girl just really starting on the journey to full womanhood’, the perversity of it all is full on display. A chap in his seventh decade referring to himself as a ‘girl’ is a case for psychiatrists, not of glamorisation.

I pick this example almost at random: to see gender-benders in my city is a daily occurrence. Just the other day I saw a transsexual on a unicycle, which once-upon-a-time might be set up for a joke, but today is almost unremarkable in one of England’s university towns.  

In the modern West mere assertion holds the same weight as fact or deed once did. Nor is this something that is seen just in the tiresome topic of gender.

Our political elites talk endlessly but do precious little (not that their inaction isn’t harmful enough). To listen to the trotted-out phrases of those in power, as they forever promise massive reforms and an end to the various maladies afflicting the body politick, the naïve could be led to believe they have a handle on things. Many decades of snowballing catastrophe, however, puts paid to that.

Perhaps all of this is a result of our digital lives. Our online avatars and interactions have displaced much of what was once conducted in person: this is why the omnipresent Twitter mob, which is easily defeated by closing one’s web browser of choice, often has the same mental impact as a pitchfork-armed mob standing on one’s lawn.

Moreover, the appearance of caring about any given topic is now seen as a substitute for action. This manifests itself in various ways, from the ‘of course I would house fifty migrants in my house’ celebrity to the middle-tier virtue signaller who proffer endless criticism of a group (the white, the male, the middle class – or any combination of the three) but refuse to reflect on their own failings lurking within.

Still, it does not matter overly in the 21^st century. In the same way that one can merely claim to be woman and society is forced to consider you so, one can effortlessly claim unearned moral rectitude. It’s almost as if, living in world that has cast asunder century-old teachings, people have forgotten any sense of humility:

Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye;
and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye. (Matthew 7:5)

Today, we live in a society governed by liars and policed by ideologues. It is little wonder that truth has died such a conspicuous death under such circumstances.

The presence of men pretending to be women may seem a trivial manifestation of such a system, but it is, in actuality, the throwing down of the gauntlet, challenging people to stand up for reality. Should they acquiesce and compliantly nod their docile heads – yes, the 6’1” bloke in lippy is a woman – then literally any manipulation of the truth is feasible. This is not a speculation but our ongoing reality.

We’re at a very low ebb, and our reluctance even to call out even the most absurd manipulations of foundational truths is testament to how far the rot has spread. Yet it wouldn’t take much to win things back: it may take as little as just as saying that no, we won’t go along with the mandated madness. Maybe there’ll be a personal cost in doing so, but it surely won’t be as great as the bill that awaits us all should we continue to blithely accept the deceit in our midst.