Gnats and Camels

The Judgement of Solomon

The Judgement of Solomon

So, as some further evidence of the ubiquity and perniciousness of “cancel culture”, quite a good essay by

Barbara Wegner

on the Substack of

Holly Math Nerd

about “Fake Journalists and Presstitues”. Though one might reasonably argue that the latter pejorative term is unfair to prostitutes, many of whom show more intellectual honesty than many of those in the “Fifth Estate”. However, a wider problem that is part and parcel of Wegner’s post is the broader subtext of too many “straining at the gnat while swallowing the camel(s) whole”.

More particularly, while Wegner makes a solid case against various journalists for being less than “ethical” – being charitable – and while she rewrites the “offending” article in a more balanced format, I think she is too quick to dismiss – in both her post on Holly’s Substack and in her own – the concept of “stochastic terrorism” and its problematic consequences and sources. Bit surprising as she more or less acknowledges the problematic consequences of the “demonization” that undergirds or motivates that “terrorism”:

This is responsibility shifting. Kell and [journalist] Lilly want the stickerer to be responsible for every act against people identifying as transgender by labeling it stochastic terrorism. ...    

Did they want someone to enact some violence on Trump or Trump’s supporters? They’ve done a pretty good job demonizing him if that was their intent. Remember when a woman wanted to burn a child alive simply because the child wore a Trump mask?

The thought, they say, is very often party to the deed. However, society itself has to accept some culpability for giving any sort of currency to such demonizations, to the ubiquity of the “thoughts” that lead to those crimes. And, speaking of prostitutes, one of the more egregious cases of that is that of “The Green River Killer”, Gary Ridgway, who apparently felt he was given carte blanche to murder prostitutes because of their “demonization” by society in general. From a rather damning indictment of much of society on that score in The Tyee:

As a society, we still see prostitution as an infestation to be kept under control. Words like “eradication” used in tandem with street prostitution are not uncommon in law enforcement lingo, as if the women selling their bodies are no better than vermin.

If we are not willing to consider how and why a man like Ridgway can come to exist and commit his crimes for years on end, we haven’t even begun to dig deeply enough into the dark core at the root of this kind of hatred.

Perhaps Nancy Gabbert, the mother of 17-year-old Ridgway victim Sandra, said it best:

“[Ridgway is] not some monster who was dropped down from another planet. He was created right here in our society.”

“How did we do this?” she asked. She deserves a real answer.

As I put it in my own kick at the stochastic terrorism kitty:

There is no doubt that such individuals [like Ridgway] are the proximate and direct causes of the carnage they produce when they explode — literally or figuratively. But that doesn’t help at all to absolve those who have stoked the fires which have produced the intolerable pressures that have indirectly contributed to such explosions.

So while Wegner makes a credible case for a more balanced article describing what various unhinged “journalists” have turned into a “Rape of the Lock, Part Deux”, Wegner’s re-write might reasonably be seen to have missed a bet in not drawing attention to the underlying issue, i.e., is “woman” an “adult human female (produces ova)”, or “merely” someone who “looks” like one?

And there’s the related and consequential question, how far does that “looks like” really extend? Superficial – put on a dress and become a woman? Or transwomen turning their penises inside out so their genitalia are such that only their gynecologists could say for sure? 🙄 Transwoman Riley Dennis certainly seems to “think” the latter is the case, arguing that:

So, three of their five ways of determining sex would be “female”... That means three-fifths of the sex criteria point to female, and only one-fifth points to male – and if you believe that sex is an unchanging biological fact, that couldn’t be possible. But it is.

Which “she” apparently “thinks” justifies “her” claim to being a female, a woman, and a lesbian.

Big part of the problem there is that far too many don’t realize, or flat-out refuse to consider, that there are NO intrinsic meanings to words in general, and to “male” and “female” in particular. Moses didn’t bring the first dictionary down from Mt. Sinai on tablets A through Z. We can define, and have historically defined, those words in many different ways – “female” used to be defined as “she who suckles” by which Jenner and Dennis might qualify. We can define those words as we wish – pay them extra as Humpty Dumpty suggested.

So the pointless and rather childish squabbling over the meaning of those words tends only to obscure and preclude dealing with more fundamental issues – a case of straining at the gnat while swallowing the camel whole:

To resist, criticize, or bemoan something minor or inconsequential while ignoring or overlooking something much more serious or important. The expression originated in the Bible, in Matthew 23:24.

In this case, the “gnat” in question is whether “vagina-havers” are “entitled” to public spaces – like toilets and change rooms – from which “penis-havers” are excluded. And likewise whether those with XX karyotypes – typically adult human females – are entitled to level playing fields in various sports from which those with XY karyotypes – typically adult human males – are excluded. Hard to believe that any rational person would strain at swallowing such logically justified and well-evidenced “gnats”.

And in this case, there are several rather toxic and seriously “unpleasant” “camels” in question, swallowed whole and peddled by various demented ideologues on virtually all sides. The first of which is the “argument” that “sex is immutable” – risibly unscientific and flatly contradicted by definitions endorsed by various credible biological journals:

And the second of which is that our genitalia qualify as our sexes – part of a rather “Big Lie”, peddled or endorsed by various “yellow journals”, that people people can actually change sex simply by mangling their genitalia. The rather criminal consequence of which is a form of “conversion therapy” by which those whose personalities are atypical are tricked into “thinking” they were “born in the wrong body” and should try changing their genitalia so they look like those of people of the other sex. A pox on the houses of both those camels and their jockeys.

Whole bunch of rather serious social problems are being left to fester because far too many of us are committed to untenable, and largely irrelevant, dogma of one stripe or another. We have seen the enemy — and he is us: