We Can Rebuild Him
From the fun-time world of the sexually dysmorphic:
Wise words, as Transgender Reddit goes, from the replies to this:
According to our height-conscious chappie, it’s all about “just being myself.” And his self is apparently a shorter person than the person he actually is:
And hey, who wouldn’t want a “controlled breaking” of their legs? Which is how his idea of ladylike shortness would be achieved. A procedure that entails an exciting range of possible complications, including limited mobility, nerve damage, chronic pain, and deformity, and for which the success rate is, intriguingly, “not known,” according to the people offering the service.
Update, via the comments:
Twin Cities Teegan adds,
And yet in some quarters, among certain activists and their ‘allies’, anyone suggesting this might find themselves assailed with indignant name-calling. Something I’ve said many times is that it seems we’re not supposed to tease apart the various phenomena currently bundled together as “trans”:
And if we’re not supposed to make any attempt at unbundling those things, insofar as one can, and if we’re not supposed to do anything but affirm and defer, then it’s difficult to remain approved of while saying, however politely, “Actually this thing here – say, men getting their legs broken in a quest to become more ladylike – is unhinged and a recipe for disaster.” And it’s not at all obvious how one might define an upper limit to the pretending that’s expected.
Regarding this undefined upper limit, commenter [+] adds,
But here’s the thing. If observable reality is no longer the measure of things, and if observable reality must actively be shunned in order to be affirming, in order to be an “ally,” – as seen, for instance, here – then where is the threshold? Where’s the point at which it all becomes too bonkers, too big an ask?
When a shirtless, deranged man – a man attacking a breastfeeding mother and her four-month-old baby – is referred to by the Vancouver Police Department, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and the Vancouver Sun, as a woman – despite all video and photographic evidence – then we’re in surreal territory. And the mismatch of claim and reality is not neutral or benign. It is corrosive. Not least to any trust in the Vancouver Police Department, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and the Vancouver Sun – the probity of which is, necessarily, called into question.
Because the public, including witnesses to the assault above, don’t generally appreciate being lied to about the identity of dangerously deranged criminals.
As I said at the time,
And if you follow the link above, you’ll see this example, this feat of incongruous pretending, is but one of many.
There’s a rabbit hole I don’t want to fall down
It’s not for the faint of heart.
But the fixation with surgery, often to a fetishistic degree, as if it could somehow deliver every heart’s desire, is a little odd.
Laughed, not sorry.
Big feet, or imagined big feet, are a recurring issue.
At which point, some musical accompaniment comes to mind.
Thing is, chappie above, the one who wants his legs broken in order to become more ladylike, is already pretty much average height for a woman, hardly conspicuous. And I doubt that the extra inch or so is what will draw attention.
Don’t they do foot binding on the NHS?
By the way, last night, in the mood for a horror movie, I watched The Last Voyage of the Demeter. It’s not very good. Oddly lifeless and at no point compelling.
You’d think that, as a premise, TRAPPED ON A BOAT WITH DRACULA might have some potential, sort of ALIEN: 1897, but little of it is realised. It’s not offensively bad, just predictable and dull. The film doesn’t even present the Count as a character, or a speaking part – he whispers half a dozen words in total – which seems a bit of an oversight.
If someone is expecting to pay for a trip to Turkey and to hand over $16,500 to have their legs smashed up, and to subsequently, in addition, pay for months of “intensive physical therapy,” and months of disability, probably unable to work, then buying custom shoes and a more flattering wardrobe sounds like a bargain in comparison. Or indeed therapy of some kind.
Again, trying to fix a software problem by smashing up the hardware.
I remember an episode of M*A*S*H (first run, I’m old) where the new surgeon, who you knew was a one-shot character, got in big trouble for removing a soldier’s appendix while doing whatever else was needed to patch him up. They went up one side of him and down the other about the moral bankruptcy of removing a healthy and functioning organ for no reason and without the patient’s consent.
Ah, the golden age of the war-torn 1950s through the lens of a 1970s sitcom.
And today we have doctors performing what can only, if you’re being honest, be called mutilations and the majority of the profession politely glances away ignoring it like passengers trying to ignore the lunatic in the subway carriage. I know there are some brave doctors standing up and they deserve acknowledgement and support, but they are too few to make a difference sadly.
The trailer looked okay but Universal Horror don’t have a great track record.
But… but… it’s affirming.
There are some mildly amusing details early on. The discovery of the Count’s ‘packed lunch’ – a strangely anaemic woman boxed in soil – but any hope of suspense and good writing soon evaporates. As the protagonist is black, there’s the inevitable dialogue about prejudice, which is tiresome and dramatically irrelevant, and we get a couple of brief scenes of girl-bossing, because, obviously, the anaemic woman has to be more competent with guns than the sailors.
There’s also the reliance on characters doing inexplicably dumb things. Having fathomed that whatever is picking them off one by one is doing so at night, and is dormant during the day, the remaining crew belatedly consider investigating the mysterious, man-size wooden crates that they’re transporting. Which they don’t do immediately, during daylight, when they can see what they’re doing, but instead do at night. Needless to say, it does not go well.
But I think much of the problem is in reducing the antagonist – the main attraction – to a silent, generic vampire, whose motives are only guessed at, in fairly uninspired dialogue, by fairly uninspired characters. A main attraction who only utters maybe half a dozen words – two very short lines, one of which is a wince-inducing cliché.
So, no, not a triumph.
I sometimes speculate about the cultural impact of all those science fiction stories with transhumanist themes in which characters get their bodies dramatically and drastically altered in various ways. Did some naive readers come to think that such things were feasible today, rather than being mere speculation about the cultural consequences of things which may be impossible?
I’m just going to leave this here, for no reason whatsoever.
Remember Sheldon Cooper’s “upper flermin”?
When thinking of a title for the post, I remembered how the Six Million Dollar Man TV series and its spin-offs differ from the Martin Caidin novel, Cyborg, on which they’re based. If memory serves, the novel is rather more grim, with the bionic prosthetics much less impressive, and with plenty of amputee angst.
Still, our hero does have a dart gun built into his metal bludgeon arm.
I think I read the novel when I was about 12 years old, but don’t remember it at all.
How about the casual outpatient sex-change and limb-change surgery in John Varley’s stories? Or consciousness-in-a-computer stories? I seem to recall Vonda McIntyre wrote a lot of stories steeped in New Age feminist fantasies about radically “progressive” transformations of biology and consciousness, but don’t recall with any clarity.
How about the casual outpatient sex-change and limb-change surgery in John Varley’s stories?
What is needed is TikTik Influencer Surgery.
Because I can, that’s why.
The heart’s desire with much of this stuff is likely the attention*. It makes them special to a degree that they, nor most people really, could never attain by developing a personality based on who they actually are. Which itself is amplified by trying to change the most fundamental aspect of who they actually are. People like that need jobs, not surgery.
*Note that this is also a common trait in women, both the Munchausen and Munchausen-by-proxy aspects.
On X, Exulansic has been reposting videos by trans patients sharing with their TikTok followers the inevitable complications of their surgeries, and the complications of their complications. There’s often a competitive aspect to it, a breathless anticipation of the next patch-up job, or an attempt at cheerful resignation, which given the general gruesomeness is quite odd.
Occasionally, it’s darkly comical – for instance, a dysmorphic woman with an unconvincing, non-functional pseudo-penis made from butchered thigh flesh – and which, due to a lapse in pre-surgery electrolysis, still grows hair. Resulting in a hairy pretend-penis that has to be shaved regularly. But more often, there’s an air of tragedy, with the patients trying to seem upbeat about their horrific situations. Lest the whole thing unravel.
Little boys want to be Superman or Batman, etc., little grils want to be princesses and witches and stuff. But then they grow up.
“Man: Well what do you mean? I want a cat.
Shopkeeper: Listen, tell you what. I’ll file its legs down a bit, take its snout out, stick a few wires through its cheeks. There you are, a lovely pussy cat.”
Yesterday’s absurd satire, today’s identity culture.
A rabbit hole would be an improvement on the outcome.
Wow, is she ever special and unique!
I don’t want any rabbit holes, thank you.
There is a particularly nasty meme in which Alice from Walt Disney’s Alice in Wonderland is leaning into a car window saying “Everything but the rabbit hole. The rabbit hole costs extra.”
I would suggest not shortening the limbs, rather, just invest is a good set of knee pads and don’t bother standing anymore. You will be a lot shorter and you will always be in the fellatio position … which it would seem, you might like to be.
See Canada’s Prime Minister for any assistance you may require.
At the bottom of FAQ’s the good folks in Turkey state the possibility of combined surgeries, perhaps I could have the excess height removed from my limbs, and added to my butt, I presume if it was spread out a little bit it might be just the thing to have prior to going downtown. I know butt augmentation surgery has a bit of a dark history in Turkey as of late but *I feel* that if it was the fabric of my own being simply being moved within me there’d be far fewer complications, and it’d be a nice birthday gift to myself. My ex-wife once said I have a “pretty good butt” already and I *just feel* a couple of touch ups would be the thing.
marc in calgary.
Gonna need a drink, barkeep.
I hope I live to see the day when the people who enable and encourage these poor souls get what they deserve.
You should try sitting here, matey.
mmmmmmk.
I would like to think this is a troll, but I suspect unfortunately this is quite real.
There is a semi-true trans fable about dropping in size due to hormone therapy. Semi-true because it does actually happen . . . sometimes. Rarely. Like all things biological, the result will vary from person to person.
The advice to this person to seek therapy is the absolute correct one. What this person is suggesting is bonkers and I doubt the outcome would be anything but horrific.
I recognize the drive however. Gender Dysphoria is a heck of a disorder and it can create some really bad ideation without therapy. As someone who fights with GD, my heart goes out this person to a certain extent, but dang it, his idea is hella dumb and I can’t think of an outcome his idea will create but more problems. Fortunately, I doubt there is a doctor out there that would do this.
I add my vote to the ‘seek waaaay more therapy’ box for this poor delusional fella.
Always liked Fats Waller’s version.
With size size nine-and-a-half in women’s shoes? He’ll look like a duck.
How old do we have to be to LOL at David’s title for this story? And how old does one have to be to consider these “trans” people to completely off their nut?
A side-effect amputees often experience is phantom pain. Their leg hurts badly even though there is no leg. Do you get phantom pain after removing your dick? That would be….suboptimal.
Such major surgeries can go very wrong. Bariatric surgery for the obese is risky. My friend’s sister had it and it went wrong and now she can only eat a special paste that is thousands of dollars/month and not covered by insurance.
You have linked to John Cage’s version by mistake.
And yet in some quarters, among certain activists, were you or I to suggest this, we might very quickly be called names. Something I’ve said many times is that it seems we’re not supposed to tease apart the various phenomena currently bundled together as “trans”:
And if we’re not supposed to make any attempt at unbundling those things, insofar as one can, and if we’re not supposed to do anything but affirm and defer, then it’s difficult to remain approved of while saying, however politely, “Actually this thing here is clearly unhinged and a recipe for disaster.” It’s hard to define an upper limit.
And so we end up with emboldened cross-dressing piss fetishists.
Which is a thing I didn’t anticipate.
More relevant may be that organ transplantation has become somewhat routine.
Now considering whether to dig out some old episodes of The Bionic Woman.
Maybe the fever will pass.
Do you get phantom pain after removing your dick?
Brings to mind the TikTok of the transwoman with Alzheimer’s screaming at her partner wanting to know what they did with her dick. Was that linked here in another thread?
I would be delighted to be 5’7″” instead of 4’11”. Just saying.
[ Fetches cushion. ]
I would be delighted to be 5’7″” instead of 4’11”. Just saying.
In The Legend of Hell House, the haunted house researchers discover that the chief spirit in the house, Emeric Belasco had had his stunted legs amputated and replaced with prosthetics.
[ Neatly ties two thread discussions together in bow ]
[ Expects free bar snacks ]
[ Peers over spectacles. ]
[ Brings phone books ]
I once doubted a physician would prescribe hormones and remove a healthy child’s genitals to (purportedly) address a mental aberration.
Surprised the upbuggered link alarm hasn’t sounded.
This is what I thought I’d posted.
Hey, I’m busy fiddling with plugins and tweaking settings I only partially understand.
[ Smoke, shouting. ]
I was happy with the blog the way it was.
It’s mostly behind-the-scenes stuff. I doubt you’ll notice much of a difference.
Hm. Maybe a gin and tonic will help bring things into focus.
[ Pours gin and tonic, resumes mysterious tinkering. ]
TOTALLY not a mental illness, you guys. TOTALLY not.
In the old days (like 20 yrs ago) if you declared that you were Napoleon or Jesus, then you were clearly nuts. In the brave new world, you can declare you are a woman and the gov will pay for your surgery.
Not sure this is progress.
The mysterious blog tinkering, on the other hand…
I heard that.
[ Pours second, fortifying gin and tonic. ]
This person must look at Cotton Hill (King of the Hill) with envy. He killed fitty men!
I venture to predict that when the day comes where we’re able to actually, y’know… Transmogrify bodies from one sex to the other, right down to the genes?
What you’re going to find out is that it makes not a bit of difference. The people wanting such things are still going to be dysfunctional nutters.
Same with the rest of the spectrum disorders. And, a whole lot of the other mental dysfunctions.
You’ll then have the spectacle of the various brands of nuttery accusing everyone else of being genocidal for not deliberately breeding more of the dysfunctional, the same way you have the deaf claiming that things like cochlear implants are “destroying their culture”.
Raw, unpleasant truth?
All of these people are essentially and effectively insane. Pandering to their derangements does nothing for them, and only creates contagion across society.
Mental health is, in a lot of the edge cases, a personal choice. You can listen to the voices in your head and act on them, or you can say “That’s nice, dear… Now, go bother someone else…” to them.
I knew a guy who was a high-functioning schizophrenic. He consciously knew he was nuts; he mostly got by because he knew and acknowledged that fact, and refused to lend the slightest credence to the things that “those voices” tried telling him. It was seriously weird to watch him argue with himself. I have no idea how it felt to him to have that going on in his head, but… There you go. Great sense of humor about the whole thing; he likened it to owning an ever-glitching computer that occasionally gave him great insights, but which kept trying to talk him into suicide or whatever other whim of the moment. Amazing visual artist, though… I think he had real potential, but he died young and unknown to any but his few friends.
Not surprisingly, it was brain cancer that got him.
The other thing here to be noted is the essential and fundamental problem with most of these people… The obsession with sex, to the exclusion of everything else.
It’s disturbing, on so many levels: Why the focus, why the warping of your entire life around your sex and the role it plays in your life? I mean, OK… Maybe you feel a little jealous, observing and perceiving all the cool things that your opposite gets to do in life, but… There is precisely nothing to be done about it. You are what you are; live with it.
I mean, yeah… Sure. Maybe I’m a little envious of the life of leisure my dogs get to live, but on the whole? I don’t want to be a dog. I know that such a thing is impossible; I have to play the cards I was dealt in life, and it’s that damn simple.
Yet, the various flavors of mentally ill that we’re talking about here, who want to be something else so very badly that they’ll mutilate their own bodies? What the hell is the deal with that? It’s a level of self-involved obsession that I can’t even begin to comprehend, and I dare say that most “normal” people can’t either.
Final analysis? It’s that obsession and laser-focused narcissism, the over-weening self-involvement: “I shoulda been a girl!!!”
No, sweetheart… You should be happy with what you are, not what you think you should be. Your mentation is aberrant, your delusional self-involved obsession with your “sexual identity” is the problem, not what biology did before birth.
I’d extend a lot of this same umbrella of disdain outwards past the usual LGBTWTFBBQ stuff and include the usual hetero paraphilias like philandery and nymphomania. The essential issue there is a lack of self-control, self-discipline, and an overly entitled obsession with sex; I have about as much contempt for the serial adulterer seeking to screw every woman/man in sight as I do the sort infesting the Castro District in San Francisco: They’re all alike, in that they’ve allowed their sex lives to become the sole and single defining feature of their lives, above everything else that makes us human.
I am not arguing for sterile abstention, either; I would argue for balance, above all else. If you’re screwing your life up because of the incessant need to have sex, then maybe you’ve got a problem, you know?
Casual sex-change may one day be a thing; I’d submit that it’ll still be a sign of an unstable and deranged personality.
The whole “trans” myth is not just catering to don-a-wig-get-access-to-women creepy males, but has become a great cash cow for morally sketchy *healthcare* professionals.
And don’t let the reality of it interfere with the balance sheet.
One of my favorite examples, which I’ve mentioned before, was the gay sf writer (now in his 80’s) who says he spent every afternoon trolling for anonymous sex.
A key discovery was that it was much easier to corrupt society if you made it highly profitable for large numbers of individuals and organizations to participate in the looting. Now even Catholic Charities and the Salvation Army are in on the scam.
He can shorten himself as much as he wants; in the end he will be a very short, effeminate man, with man hands, man feet, and a man torso.
@ComputerLabRat,
End of the day, whoever does the forensics work on his body will run a DNA sequence on his genes, find that he’s running XY chromosomes, and describe him as “male”. Everything else is denial and cosplay.
I’m not even sure what the hell drives this, because I simply cannot put myself in their shoes, any of them. OK, I’m a boy… BFD. I have an outie, not an innie. I’m a girl? No problem, different set of rules, different body, different role… I’m OK with what God or random chance gave me, because it’s ‘effing immutable. I cannot change it, and even if it were possible, that’s what I started with.
Why the angst? Why the obsession? Why the driven desire to be that which you are not?
I’ve talked to a few of these people, trying to find answers. By the end of the conversation, about all I could really say was “Man, this guy/girl is really mentally ill…” I’m as certain as I can get about these things that it’s also essentially incurable; if you could wave a magic wand over their heads and make them really a real girl, they’d still be unhappy, because the root of their issues hasn’t actually been addressed; they’re still mentally ill, just now as a girl.
[recounts sexual and other abuse, in and out of foster care]
Procrustes. FFS, waiting for someone to say it so I wouldn’t have to look it up. Sigh. I had to look it up.
@dicentra,
The amount of damage created by sexually-related abuse is incredible. You go looking at the denizens of the prison system and the related infrastructure of the legal system, and it’s mind-bending what you find as the common linking factor: Child sexual abuse, of one sort or another. It is literally everywhere.
Which is why I just look at those who say these are victimless crimes and shouldn’t be punished as though they were mad… Because, they are.
I’d lay you long odds that were you to institute a consistent program of simply eliminating, by one means or another, every single abuser in these situations, you’d cut the crime rates by exponential amounts.
Unfortunately, the luvvies of the world just want to excuse everything, and let these creatures get off, scot-free.
It is maddening that the same people who get sent into hysterics at the thought of the earth’s temperature (whatever that means) going up half of a degree, such that everything must grind to a halt and be turned upside down to stop AGW, are so willfully blind to the damage done by these creatures to children and the ensuing problems that causes.
Like protects like.
That. Call me Napoleon, you bigots.
Well, if observable reality is no longer the measure of things, and if observable reality must actively be shunned in order to be affirming, in order to be an “ally” – as seen, for instance, here – then where is the threshold? Where’s the point at which it all becomes too bonkers, too big an ask?
When a shirtless, deranged man – a man attacking a breastfeeding mother and her four-month-old baby – is referred to by the Vancouver Police Department, and the CBC, and the Vancouver Sun, as a woman, despite all video and photographic evidence, then we’re in surreal territory. And the mismatch of claim and reality is not neutral or benign. It is corrosive. Not least to any trust in the Vancouver Police Department, the CBC, and the Vancouver Sun – the probity of which is, necessarily, called into question.
Because the public, including witnesses to the assault, don’t generally appreciate being lied to about the identity of dangerously deranged criminals.
As I said at the time,
And if you follow the link above, you’ll see this example is but one of many.
[ Post updated. ]
I just remembered an exchange I had some years ago with the late blogger Norm Geras, who didn’t see much point in blogs having comments. (His own blog, which I enjoyed reading, didn’t permit comments.) But much of the content here is inspired by commenters. It turns a statement into a discussion.
Which always struck me as the point of the thing.
Kirk:
More Kirk:
Indeed, child abuse/neglect features prominently in these stories.The “luvvies of the world” – the useful idiots – do not understand that this is a compulsive behavior, a coping mechanism. They apply their own experience of sex to a completely different set of experiences.
Here’s a great 1st-hand description:
https://www.sa.org/solution/
Indeed. This cannot be said too often. These loud “protectors” of criminals have a remarkable willingness to bully and harm those who challenge their delusions or impede their policies.
Remember the the Muslim-run bakery in France which put poop in cake frosting for its “infidel” customers?
Indeed. But there is the risk that the comments will become infested with trolls and people who although not actually trolls nonetheless have nothing of substance to say beyond “I agree”. There were a number of blogs whose comment threads I initially read in their first years of existence because the readers would contribute a great deal of additional information, but which I eventually abandoned because the proportion of chaff to wheat became too high.
I’m actually surprised by how little trolling we’ve had here in seventeen years. I can only recall blocking a handful of miscreants.
Almost feel neglected.
Perhaps I’m too charming.
Yes, that must be it.
Wild speculation: This blog has a relatively small public profile and small number of commenters. Trolls therefore see it as an unprofitable target for their efforts.
You’re harshing my buzz, man.
Ladies, is this true?
😀
Well, you do set a tone of civility and thoughtfulness uncongenial to trolls.
But I’m curious: Setting aside commercial spam which is largely from bots, how many comments do you see on the average day that could fall into the category of trolling?
Apart from bot spam, it’s practically zero.
I’ve never borrowed another woman’s underwear. He’s just a pervert.
But I was under the impression that whenever women gather, they just throw their knickers into a big bowl and then dig out any old pants after the pillow-fight.
No?
[ Fetches enormous punch bowl for any knickers discarded in a carefree manner. ]
The trolls must be scared off by your radiant je ne sais quoi. Or the henchlesbians.
Another thought: You don’t post many times each day. You don’t post on as wide a variety of topics as the most frequented blogs, and you don’t write in a particularly provocative manner.
I agree with Hazel Appleyard:
Hazel Appleyard is calling it quits. 🙁
I’ve never left a movement. I’m not entirely sure how that works.
Does someone have to stamp something?
I’m going to call that quality control. I could, I suppose, post several short snippets a day, but that risks being glib. I prefer to give things time to breathe, and for comments to accumulate. Often, as in this post, the comments prompt updates.
There’s no end of stuff I don’t know enough about to justify any commentary. Ditto stuff I’m not interested in.
Well, I’m not trying to be controversial. So I suppose that’s something.
Remember how in the early days of Instapundit Glenn Reynolds would often post a link with a single-word comment “Heh” or “Indeed”? That’s major glibness. But all humor aside, he was often posting just to direct his readers’ attention to blogs that he felt deserved a wider audience.
And ditto that you don’t want to spend all day at your keyboard, I’ll bet.
The ultimate contrast to your approach would be people on Twitter and Facebook who actually try to get themselves banned.
And thus we must respect his precedence with the “™” acknowledgement.
I think I’ve spent maybe fifteen minutes looking at Facebook. I mean, in total, since it sprang into existence. And that’s largely been to check whether the local fish and chip shop is open during the holidays.
Trolls just don’t have a chance.
Too many billy goats.
[ Checks status of punch bowl. ]
When is tr&nsgender day of silence? That would be nice.
Another sad story. These stories are continuing to appear with increased frequency. One can only hope that we’re approaching peak crazy as some have said we would.
When this is finally over, the scandal will dwarf the satanic day care scare/fraud.
The number of people who will deserve prison or ruinous lawsuits will be enormous.