The most powerful rhetorical argument for embracing transgenderism is that it is cruel to make people feel bad simply for being different from everybody else.

People are who they are, and it is cruel to punish them for being who they are.

It’s a good point, although ironically it also is exactly the explanation for why the current promotion of transgender ideology is so evil and cruel.

Transgender ideology, after all, is all about reinforcing people’s hatred for who they were born to be. If your prescription for happiness is the radical alteration of your body because you are unhappy with how it is, then you are not affirming somebody as they are; you are insisting the opposite.

“I hate myself” is an unhealthy sentiment. “You are right to hate yourself, so chop off some body parts to become different” is a pretty sick bit of advice. Alphabet ideologists are so insistent that this is the right approach that they are literally making it illegal to provide thertapy to people with gender dysphoria that is intended to help them become happier in their own bodies.

There is a genuine mental illness called gender dysphoria, and it causes genuine suffering. It is similar in kind to anorexia and other body dysmorphias, and in a rational world we would treat it as such. We don’t “affirm” to an anorexic that are overweight and should eat less; we work to align their perception of their body with reality so they can live healthy lives. We don’t encourage people who believe they are “transabled” to blind themselves or destroy their hearing.

Sure, something is wrong and the person needs help, but not help in implementing their delusions, but rather help in becoming happier as they are.

Unfortunately the current mania is to encourage self-harm, not self-help.

Major companies are now promoting the idea that mutilating oneself is “cool,” and using cartoon images aimed at teens to promote radical double mastectomies.

Costa Coffee started a firestorm in the UK over its own transition from a brand that promoted reading literature–it sponsored a literature award for 50 years and just dropped it–to promoting radical mastectomies for trans children.

Until last summer Costa coffee sponsored book prizes.
Now its marketing team think promoting breast removal surgery in cartoons is the way forward. Who thinks this is progress? https://t.co/2WL39b7lGi

— Susanna Rustin (@SusannaRustin) August 2, 2023

“Top” surgery is the new “thing.” And “top surgery” is just another term for radical double mastectomy, and in this case is marketed as a treatment for mental illness instead of physical illness.

Radical double mastectomy sounds pretty unpleasant and used to be something one wished to avoid, if possible, but because of alphabet ideology it must be made to seem “cool,” and the marketing geniuses in our corporations have taken on the task.

Just 5 minutes ago scarring oneself to relieve mental discomfort was seen as “self-harm.” Now it is a form of personal expression. In fact, being born with breasts is something to disdain and of course it makes girls unhappy, so the solution is to lop them off and embrace the scars.

Doc Martens sells nothing but cool. Cool is its actual product, and mastectomies are now cool for kids. Nobody wears shoes like this for practical reasons.

Oxfam, which used to be a charity that focused on feeding people, now spends its efforts and resources on affirming self-harm.

Feed our starving children so that doctors can mutilate them is, apparently, their current message.

Local governments, too, have gotten into the mastectomy-promotion business. In the UK a local children’s center has a mural that celebrates the radical double mastectomies of teens and makes them seem cool.

The rationale that is pushed at us for why this is a good thing is that everybody should be embraced for “who they are,” and people with gender dysphoria need it more than most.

Yes, but…

As I said earlier, this is the opposite of helping people feel good about who they are. The message is “You must mutilate your body in order to become who you should be.”

We are telling kids they are defective for having breasts. Are you unhappy? It is your body’s fault, and we can change it for you.

Teenagers–especially teens going through difficult transitions–are particularly susceptible to this messaging. Discomfort, anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and fear of the changes puberty brings are all very normal. Not all kids experience these, of course, but a large number do. An entire genre of movies about coming of age and the difficulties people experience exists because of this fact.

Alphabet ideology exists to hijack these emotions and encourage children to turn against themselves. Kids are encouraged to rage against their own bodies as the cause of their natural emotional experiences.

The embrace of this ideology by the most powerful and effective marketers in the world is a crisis. That many people passively accept that this is “affirming” children in their identity is bizarre. It is so obviously the opposite of that.

Which, I suppose, proves that power of advertising.