Commonsense & Wonder

How ridiculous will the Balkanization of America become. When you insist on group identification and group rights rather than individual rights and respect for individuals based on their own attributes rather than membership or lack thereof in some favored or disfavored collective, this is the level of absurdity that results.

Somewhere, Under the Rainbow

by KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON July 26, 2015

Never mind the atomic ayatollahs, it’s a trans/drag girl fight! Somewhere in Iran, a team of very studious, serious, and likely bespectacled men is working, diligently and tirelessly, to build a nuclear weapon. Perhaps it will be detonated in Jerusalem. Perhaps it will be detonated in New York City, and perhaps these men describe their work, with grim humor, as “the Manhattan project.”

Meanwhile, in Glasgow, the West is not concerned with men strapping on their armor, but about whether some men who strap on wigs and brassieres are offensive to other men who strap on wigs and brassieres. Our Kat Timpf reports that Glasgow’s biggest gay-pride festival banned and then unbanned performances by some drag queens (but only some! A bit more on that in a bit) from its annual march.

Drag queens have been a part of gay life in the Western world for many years, from New York’s Halloween parade to London cabaret acts. Under pressure from transgender activists, the Glasgow festival banned so-called cisnormative drag queens — drag queens who are, underneath the makeup, men who enjoy dressing up as women rather than men who believe themselves to be women, i.e., good old-fashioned weirdos without the delusional psychotherapeutic window-dressing — on the basis that their costumes lampoon femininity, which offends transgendered women, i.e., men who believe themselves to be women. That a theatrical group of almost exclusively gay men should have non-nonconformist attitudes toward femininity is not entirely surprising; what is almost surprising — but not quite — is that we are expected to take seriously the proposition that we must suppress this affront to the feminine identity because it offends women who have penises and testicles.

The organizers of the “LGBTQIA+” (what, no asterisk? Oh, the bigotry!) festival explained:

The decision was taken by transgender individuals who were uncomfortable with having drag performances at the event. It was felt that it would make some of those who were transgender or questioning their gender uncomfortable. It was felt by the group within the Trans/Non Binary Caucus that some drag performance, particularly cis drag, hinges on the social view of gender and making it into a joke, however transgender individuals do not feel as though their gender identity is a joke. Sexuality has been many things over the course of human history: an “orientation,” a taste, an inclination, an indulgence — only in the dreary, ugly, neo-puritanical days of the early 21st century is it a “caucus.”

Sexuality has been many things over the course of human history: an “orientation,” a taste, an inclination, an indulgence — only in the dreary, ugly, neo-puritanical days of the early 21st century is it a “caucus.” I’ve always been of the opinion that what a man likes to do with his own caucus is pretty much his own business, assuming consent and the absence of barnyard animals or construction equipment, but that is far too happy-go-lucky an attitude for these times.

Read the rest here