We Don't Need the Eggs

How do you feel about the Russian land management program underway in Ukraine?

How would you feel if that was how establishment politicians referred to the invasion of Ukraine—and if the establishment media repeated the phrase uncritically?

“Ukrainian extremists continue to attack Russian peacekeepers deployed by the Kremlin in support of its land management program,” the news anchors would report.

Would you shake your head at the nerve of those lousy Ukrainian extremists or would you recoil at the perversion of language?

The Russian military launched a land invasion of Ukraine over a year ago and Ukrainians have been fighting to repel the invasion ever since.  Situations like that are typically referred to as wars because we share a common understanding that a sustained armed conflict between nation states is called a war.

It’d be pretty weird to call it a “Russian land management program” when it’s so obviously a war.

One would therefore have to assume that anyone using such bizarre language was engaged in deliberate obfuscation—a willful misrepresentation of reality.

So let’s talk for a moment about gender-affiriming care.

Hey, internet, what’s the definition of gender-affirming care?

“Well,” says the internet, “according to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC):”

Gender-affirming care, as defined by the World Health Organization, encompasses a range of social, psychological, behavioral, and medical interventions “designed to support and affirm an individual’s gender identity” when it conflicts with the gender they were assigned at birth.

So apparently it’s all the stuff done to affirm an individual’s identity when it’s in conflict with his or her biological reality.  To affirm their identity as something they’re not.

Before we dive all the way into that absurdity, a couple of thoughts on the language being used here.

First of all, the sex on your birth certificate is based on whether you’re born with a penis or vagina.  Nobody looks at a newborn and says, “I see a penis but this kid looks pretty trans to me, so I’ll go ahead and assign it a sex of female.” Sex isn’t assigned at birth; it’s duly noted.

See that “MALE” on my birth certificate? It means “baby with penis.” It’s an empirical and entirely objective observation. Not “assignment.”

Secondly, isn’t gender supposed to be a social construct? Something distinct from biological sex?  Wasn’t that the theory that got this whole party started? That’s how someone with a penis and testicles and XY chromosomes could identify as a woman: male by sex, female by gender.  Weird, sure, but at least it’s logically tenable. The definition cited above, however, talks about a gender “assigned” at birth. That’s not something that happens. It is not a thing.

If it were a thing, it would have to be in addition to sex. We’d have birth certificates with one spot for observed sex and another for assigned gender. Anyone ever see one of those? I don’t doubt that people are hard at work on finding a way to legislate those into reality soon, but they haven’t succeeded… yet.

Now back to the definition.

Gender-affirming care, in the defined sense, literally means delusion-affirming care. There’s no way around that.

It’s the medically sanctified reinforcement of a false understanding of biological reality.

The 1977 comedy classic Annie Hall ends with a wistful monologue by the hapless Alvy Singer, played by Woody Allen. It includes this bit of wisdom:

I thought of that old joke.  You know, this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, “Doc, uh, my brother’s crazy.  He thinks he’s a chicken.”  And, uh, the doctor says, “Well, why don’t you turn him in?”  And the guy says, “I would, but I need the eggs.” 

(You can see the scene here.)

These days, of course, the psychiatrist would have to offer to support and affirm the brother’s species identity, because how is a guy thinking he’s a chicken any different than his thinking he’s a chick?

Answer: it’s not at all different.

“Gender-affirming care” is as grotesque a lie as my hypothetical “Russian land management” but it’s now been so thoroughly mainstreamed that to raise any objections is to be branded a bigot, a transphobe, or even—most bizarrely—a misogynist. (You don’t think men who pretend they’re women are women, so you’re obviously a woman-hater!)

When Eldest was very young she went through a period where she was afraid of monsters. She often came running into our bedroom at night, terrified of the monsters she’d heard prowling around under her bed or behind her bookcase. Those were her brave nights: sometimes she’d simply scream for us to come to her rescue so as not to expose herself to monsters in the frantic dash to our room.

Herself and I tried to talk her out of it, but there was no reasoning with her. The monsters were real. At last we provided what I now understand to have been monster-affirming care.

I took a little plastic spray bottle—the kind you use to mist your plants if you’re the kind of person who has plants that want misting—and I filled it with water. I then affixed it with a “Monster Spray” label that included a skull and crossbones.

We told Eldest that although it was harmless to people, the contents of that bottle were instant death to monsters. What’s more, they could smell it a mile away and would avoid it at all costs. So in the bright light of day we would squirt a few mists under her bed and wherever else she told us to, and for good measure we’d spray again as we tucked her in at night.

It worked.

Now, the world is certainly full of monsters, but I can assure you that the particular monsters frightening Eldest had been entirely imaginary. They were only real to her. Fortunately, my monster spray was also real to her. That’s why it worked.

Our imaginary treatment got rid of the imaginary monsters that were upsetting Eldest in a very real way.

Right now our medical establishment is treating an imaginary condition with the barbaric realism of chemical castration, amputation, drugs, and permanent disfigurement.

That’s “gender-affirming care.”

That’s a chicken whose eggs we don’t need.