What Palestinians and trans people have in common
Several people in one of yesterday’s threads mentioned this essay by Eve Barlow. When I read it, I was struck by her explanation of why so many trans activists seem to be pro-Palestinian – when most Palestinians would hate their guts and if they moved to Gaza they wouldn’t be long for this world. It’s more than a red-green alliance between leftists and jihadists, something that’s been in evidence since 1979 in Iran, when the two groups united to overthrow the Shah and then the jihadists executed the leftists in short order. No, this trans-jihadist alliance is even stranger.
Here’s what Barlow has written:
… [T]rans ideology has not only normalized lying, it has made it socially acceptable – and attempted to make it legally enforceable. Trans activists can change the facts about their identity at whim and people must comply. It figures that some who fight that culture war can also recognize that after Israel was established, there were certain Arabs who “self-ID’d”, if you like, as “Palestinians” post 1948 under the influence of PLO leader Yasser Arafat, and that they have lied for years in order to remove Israel from the map and claim it as their own homeland. The Nakba is a propagandist lie. Every war Israel has fought has been in defense of her security against insurgents. There’s a clear alliance between trans ideologues and pro Pals: a false claim to victimhood and enforced compliance via manipulation and lying.
She is correct in saying “trans activists,” because many trans people are well aware that they haven’t really changed sexes and don’t demand that the world recognize them that way; they just want to quietly live their lives presenting as the opposite sex. But trans activists certainly do make those demands, and many do so even when they obviously look nothing like the sex they claim to be.
Barlow is correct that both Palestinians and trans activists share a denial of truth and history, although one denies a truth and history that is more individual (the sex of a person), and another denies a truth and history that is more national in terms of who they are and who the Israelis are, and who’s been aggressively wishing to obliterate who.
However, you could argue that the Palestinians’ “claim to victimhood” is not utterly false. They are victims of a sort, although not victims of the Jews they blame. They are victims of the propaganda they’ve been fed and the promises their leaders have made, and victims of their leaders’ thievery and willingness to use them as human shields. At this point, of course, many if not most Palestinians are willing victims, having also been taught that Jews are almost literally devils and that it is great to die a martyr if you die in the act of killing them or if your death can be used as propaganda to harm them.
And you might rightly say that many trans people are victims, too – victims of propaganda at a young age, of groomers who are sexually drawn to the idea of convincing kids to mutilate themselves, of drug companies, of unscrupulous doctors and therapists, and of various forms of mental illness such as autism and body dysmorphia.
In other words, as with the Palestinians, they are actually victims of those who pretend to champion them.
Excellent analysis, Neo.
Eve’s initial insight really grabbed me, but she didn’t expand on it.
You always get to the heart of things and express it so well.
Human beings have the ability to rationalize almost anything no matter how incongruous and absurd it may seem to others. Completely contradicting ideas have to be either psycologically short circuted or outright ignored in order to avoid the unpleasent feelings of cognitive dissonance. And some people who’ve been fully emersed in ideologies and beliefs that lead to such contradictions who are challenged to recognize these contradictions will respond by lashing out with rage instead of any actual introspection. In my experience a fair amount of personal ruination has to occur before people can accept being wrong.
It’s “cool” to stick it to the man! It’s like a book being “banned” makes it almost mandatory to read.
@ Nonapod > “In my experience a fair amount of personal ruination has to occur before people can accept being wrong.”
Excellent observations.
That’s pretty much the basis of the maxim that alcoholics have to hit the bottom before they are willing to make the effort to break the chains.
Also a well-recognized impetus for Christian repentance.
Some people can get the idea before being completely ruined, but the contradictions and dissonance of where you are and where you need to be are still a big problem.
There’s a clear alliance between trans ideologues and pro Pals: a false claim to victimhood and enforced compliance via manipulation and lying.
This seems an over-egged explanation. Trans and pro-Palis hate the West and are willing to manipulate, lie and even kill. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. For now they are allies.
Hitler and Stalin were once too.
The transgendered reject their biological reality. The Palestinians reject peaceful relations not just with Israel but with their fellow Muslims. Evidenced by the fact that no other Muslim nation will accept them. Though now that Canada has recognized the non-existent Palestinian State, how long till Ottawa starts admitting thousands?
Islam claims lineage from Abraham’s son Ishmael. “He will be a wild donkey of a man, his hand against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he shall live in hostility toward all his brothers”. Genesis 16:12
Islam – The Democrat party at Prayer
@ huxley > “This seems an over-egged explanation. Trans and pro-Palis hate the West and are willing to manipulate, lie and even kill.”
Not so much over-egged, more like a cover-up.
They really can’t say the true connection out loud, as you did, so they have to give their (hated but useful) dupes in the hated West a “reason” for their alliance, hence the shared “false claim to victimhood.”
Both are inherently agreed on the “enforced compliance via manipulation and lying.”
And killing.