Eugenics and Mermaids

[ari_ormstunga]

I was recently having a conversation with a few individuals and Pride month came up. We each shared our opinions, which were relatively diverse. When it was my turn to speak, I started with a number of caveats, including that I think adults should be allowed to do what they like with consenting partners, or to modify their bodies as they see fit, including surgically, and that I am at least somewhat pro-choice. Then I told them I thought Pride, and more broadly a lot of aspects of modern Liberalism, were rebranded eugenics.

I spoke about the history of eugenics, and of how it was popular before World War 2 and the atrocities of the Nazis. Sterilizing so-called undesirables like the poor, people with disabilities, mental illnesses, and homosexuals was regarded as being a positive thing by a number of the intelligentsia of the time, including Margret Sanger of Planned Parenthood fame.

Observing the pro-trans movement now, people who would have been gay or lesbian in the past are now often coming out as trans. Many of the people who are now identifying as trans are autistic. They are being encouraged by society to take treatments and essentially submit to sterilization via “gender affirming” care.

Unlimited abortion on demand and assisted suicide as it is currently being practiced in Canada are two other Liberal policies that are being embraced and championed as essential, compassionate healthcare.

All of these things are being pushed by the liberal intelligentsia of our time, and when you put aside the rationalizations for them doing what they are doing, it amounts to fulfillment of the same goals eugenicists have always had. Sterilization of "undesirables" and population control for the poor, but rebranded for our times and given a rosy spin with public relations wizardry. 

“So Pride month, and modern liberalism in general, are basically eugenics with a colorful flag,” I finished.

One of the participants in the conversation nodded wisely.

“You think that’s messed up, I just saw this TikTok with a bunch of people who saw mermaids.”

Now, don’t get me wrong, I think mermaids are groovy and maybe the person was just trying to change the topic from my controversial hot take, but it occurred to me that anything someone says that deviates from conventional wisdom is instantly going to get lumped in with Qanon, Satanists on the Moon, and other entertaining flights of fancy.

I guess anyone who self-identifies as a magician in the 2020’s shouldn’t expect to be taken seriously by pretty much anyone.

That mermaid video was pretty neat though.

Comments

[ofmonstrouswords]

For a moment I totally thought the mention of Mermaids in the title was regarding Mermaids UK, an organization that "supports trans and gender variant youth" (big pushers of the transing children thing).

You're completely right, btw -- the current push is eugenics with a colourful flag. And I say that as a bisexual person who considers herself nonbinary-gendered. I wrote a thread about it on Twitter recently, basically stating that gender dysphoria needs to be given different options than medical interventions, which should be last resort and NEVER used for minors.

I went through some pretty bad gender dysphoria, but I'm lucky enough to be part of the generation that escaped what's being done to children and young people -- I never sought medical interventions nor had them pushed on me. Through other methods I was able to mitigate my gender dysphoria, which actually helped me become okay with being female (I can't change my sex, after all), and I'm theoretically still fertile and able to have kids.

(I say theoretically because there have been some struggles there, but unrelated to my gender stuff.)

Unlimited abortion on demand and assisted suicide as it is currently being practiced in Canada are two other Liberal policies that are being embraced and championed as essential, compassionate healthcare.

Yeah. It reminds me, honestly, of PETA's position that animals are better off dead rather than live in a world where they may have to interact or be taken care of by humans. "Life is so hard for the poor/disabled/mentally ill! Death would be kinder. Hey, let's make that policy."

It's all very awful.

(On the plus side for Canada, at least, while we have no legal restrictions on abortion we do have policy restrictions that actually keep it from spiraling out of control. It's rare and difficult to get an abortion here past 20 weeks. And we have policies on revealing sex to parents to help prevent sex-selective abortions -- you can't get the result until after a certain time, at which point getting an abortion is almost impossible.

Course, that just means tons of people go south of the border to get earlier sex scans so they can abort up here before the cutoff.

Personally, my views are pretty staunchly pro-choice, but of the older school: safe, sane, rare. While being pro-choice, I view abortion as a moral wrong. However, I do not necessarily see that as being a moral wrong on the part of the woman getting one, but rather society as a whole -- the fact that we've created such a world where it happens so frequently is a big L on us as a species. In my ideal world, abortion would be so vanishingly rare that you wouldn't need any laws on it.

The thing about being pro-people-making-independent-choices, though, is sometimes you have to be okay with them making stupid or morally abhorrent ones...so long as they've truly consented, and have not been coerced, pushed, or otherwise forced (which many women who "choose" abortion are).)

[ari_ormstunga]

I wasn't consciously aware of the Mermaids group you mentioned (although I suppose I might have seen a reference somewhere and forgotten it). Might be a synchronicity!

Dysphoria sounds very uncomfortable and I feel for anyone experiencing it. The closest I have ever come to such a thing was a brief episode in the bath as a young child where I went looking for my vagina, and when I couldn't find it I felt upset and thought it must have been sewn shut by a doctor. The memory has persisted, given my current spiritual beliefs I now think it may have been something of a holdover from a past life.

I suspect that for many young people the gender stuff is kind of faddish, and I've read some statistics showing that a lot cases of gender dysphoria are transitory. I agree that many gender affirming treatments are bad news for that reason. Informal gender bending is probably pretty harmless but the drive to erase biological sex is concerning and the pronoun thing is, in my view as a dude with autism, pretty annoying. Overall, I think it's too bad a lot of autistic kids and clueless young people are making irreversible decisions so early in life.

I think we are pretty much on the same page with the abortion thing as well (I'm less comfortable with the idea of a doctor offing a baby as it comes out of the birth canal than a woman getting an abortion early in pregnancy).

It's funny that by today's standards I'm probably an awful extremist hard right MAGA supporter. How times have changed.