J.K. Rowlings’ fallout with the so-called transgender movement is instructive

The “transgender” movement highlights everything that’s wrong with the Left, for Leftists seek societal control un-anchored to reason, science, or sanity.

You may have heard that J. K. Rowling recently got called out by the so-called transgender movement for daring to say that men are not women. To her credit, Rowling hasn’t backed down (yet). Mark Hamill, though, did offer a groveling apology for liking Rowling’s tweet about men being men.

Rowling’s high profile is important because it is thanks to her visibility that previously unaware people are gaining an insight into the way in which so-called transgenderism is being used as a leading edge, a spear tip, to exert Leftist control over Western society. What happened to Rowling is only a small part of a big story.

Using the Rowling kerfuffle as a springboard, this post looks as the risible nonsense behind so-called transgenderism and the damage it’s causing to children, women and, especially, the mentally ill. Because it’s long (really long) I’ve tried to divide it into easy to read, or easy to skip, subsections, complete with the following hyperlinked Table of Contents:

I. What SBBDD is and what it is not.

A. There isn’t a scintilla of evidence showing that so-called “transgenderism” is a real thing.
B. People with SBBDD are to be pitied – but they don’t get to lead the parade.
C. We should examine a possible connection between the Pill and the rise in sex focused body dysmorphia

II. Explaining how J.K. Rowling, a Leftist, ended up in the SBBDD movement’s cross hairs.

A. Maya Forstater, a TERF, is the feminist Rosa Parks when it comes to the SBBDD movement
B. Forstater has been identified as “transphobic” for voicing biological truths about men and women.
C. Forstater lost her job and appeared before the Tribunal because she deliberately put herself out as a test case of British speech and employment law.
D. The Employment Tribunal held against Forstater, stating that a belief in biology is “not worth of respect in a democratic society.”
E. Rowling made the world aware of British policies re SBBDD because she dared to agree with biology.

III. What happened in England is being pushed here, in America.

IV. The SBBDD movement is undermining core values, not to mention reality

A. Proggies don’t believe their own shtick.
B. The end of free speech.
C. The end of third wave feminism (which may well be a good thing).
D. The deconstruction of femininity
E. Severing parent-child relationships
F. Attacks on normal sexuality

V. Advocating a sane approach to dealing with people suffering from SBBDD.

And now . . . THE ESSAY.

For purposes of this essay, I will frequently eschew the term “transgender,” because that term cedes the argument to those people who believe that they have the “wrong” body. There is no such thing as crossing from one sex to another, which is what the term “transgender” means. In place of the determinative word “transgender,” I prefer “sex-based body dysmorphic disorder,” or SBBDD.

I. What SBBDD is and what it is not.

A. There isn’t a scintilla of evidence showing that so-called “transgenderism” is a real thing.

The science of sex is very simple: Among mammals, including humans, there are two sexes, male and female. Within each mammalian species, the biological gender differences are very strong, both physically and mentally. Nature/God (take your pick) did it this way to encourage two things: (1) survival ability in order (2) to procreate. In rare cases, kids are born with tangled sex genes, but . . . as I said, it’s rare.

The “science” of “gender,” as opposed to the biological reality about human sex, is a make-believe 21st century construct intended to (1) make formerly marginalized people feel that they are part of the big bump on the bell curve of human behavior, rather than hanging out in the lonely, long-tail ends and (2) deconstruct traditional morality and family relationships in order to weaken Western civilization and bring in a shining new Leftist paradise.

Not long ago, I examined the most recent statement about SBBDD from the American Academy of Pediatrics, America’s preeminent pediatric organization. I discovered that, while the AAP has all sorts of theories predicated upon accepting that SBBDD is real, you will find nothing proving through the scientific method that SBBDD is, in fact, real. I won’t re-hash that long post here, but please feel free to check it out.

The bottom line, as I pointed out above, is that SBBDD is just another form of body dysmorphia — that is, people’s feeling that their bodies do not align with their sense of self. Indeed, no doubt inspired by SBBDD’s success, we’re seeing another extreme form of body dysmorphia called “transableism.” People who identify as “transabled” believe they were born to be physically handicapped and will deliberately maim themselves to achieve that state.

No one pretends that people who are “transabled” are sane. Why, then, do we pretend SBBDD is real?

B. People with SBBDD are to be pitied – but they don’t get to lead the parade.

Believe it or not, I have nothing but sympathy for those who have body dysmorphic disorder and feel that they are in the wrong body. That feeling has long been a psychiatric disorder called body dysmorphic disorder (“BDD”). I have sympathy for people suffering from BDD when they have anorexia. I have sympathy for BDD sufferers when they hate their own limbs so much they seek voluntary amputation. I have sympathy for them when they think they’re dragons, aliens, or bunny rabbits. And I have sympathy when they look down at breasts or penises and feel confusion and disgust. I can’t imagine how awful it must feel every day to wake up in the wrong skin, so to speak.

Sympathy, though, does not mean that I will accept that anorexics are fat, that voluntary amputees have “alien” limbs attached to them, or that someone is a dragon, alien, or bunny rabbit. Nor will I be brainwashed or bullied into thinking that people are not the sex their biology dictates — especially if the one doing the bullying knows it’s a scam.

C. We should examine a possible connection between the Pill and the rise in sex focused body dysmorphia

As I’ve noted above, there is no science supporting SBBDD. And again, I have no quarrel with people who suffer from the horrific feeling that they’re in the wrong body. The point of this post is to challenge the political bullies who, whether or not they claim to be “transgendered” themselves, use SBBDD as a vehicle for advancing social and political goals. But before I get to the core of this post, I do want to raise a theory I’ve nurtured for a while that could identify a causative factor behind the rising number of sexually confused people.

In the Western world, most women use the Pill before they finally have children. I think it’s possible that this huge influx of artificial female hormones into women’s bodies may be accounting for the increase in the number of feminized men (and perhaps masculinized women) that we are seeing of late. In other words, it’s possible that modern sexual confusion isn’t due solely to the Leftist push to erase traditional gender and gender roles, thereby erasing sexual and family norms, weakening the family, and making government more necessary.

I would love to see research into whether the Pill’s lingering effects in a woman’s body affects the hormone wash babies get in utero. If the Pill does indeed have this effect, a baby may be completely male at the DNA level, but the residual Pill-generated effects in his mother’s body may mean that he’s getting hormones that are consistent with developing female traits in the brain. Nobody has been studying this, but I think someone should. It’s a shame that, between the Pill’s untouchable status and the new reverence for SBBDD, it’s politically incorrect for any researchers to touch this question.

II. Explaining how J.K. Rowling, a Leftist, ended up in the SBBDD movement’s cross hairs.

A. Maya Forstater is a TERF — a biological woman who challenges the SBBDD movement

The lead story is that Rowling got in trouble because she agreed with someone who said men are men, not women. That’s short and easy. The problem is that it really doesn’t get to what is going on in England right now. The real issue is the battle between TERFs and the SBBDD movement.

TERF — which is a hugely dirty word amongst those who identify as “transgender” – stands for “trans exclusionary radical feminist.” What’s “radical” about these feminists isn’t that (unlike generic third wave feminists) they hate men. It’s just that they think men and women are different. They further believe that being a woman is a unique biological experience. They maintain that men who think they are women, having never actually lived in a woman’s body, are instead responding to images of women, both stereotypical and otherwise.

TERFs also point out that men who think they are, or pretend to be, women, are rapidly destroying all the gains that feminism achieved for women. They’re concerned as well that mixing SBBDD men with women puts women at risk because (a) predators can pretend to have SBBDD to access women-only spaces and (b) many men who claim to be transgender show signs of severe mental instability.

Now that you know a little bit about TERFs, let’s talk about Maya Forstater. Forstater is a tax expert and British Leftist (you only have to see her CV to understand where her politics are) who was working as a visiting fellow at the Center for Global Development, a think-tank with headquarters in D.C. and London.

B. Forstater has been identified as “transphobic” for voicing biological truths about men and women.

One of the early ways in which Forstater got into trouble with the SBBDD movement is because, as a Leftist feminist (and “transgender”  heretic), she refuses to appear on speaker’s panels when she is the only woman. However, because she’s also a TERF, she says that, in determining the sex ratio on a panel, it doesn’t count if the other “woman” on the panel is a man claiming to be a woman.

This view of the world means that Forstater refused to appear on a panel with Pips/Phillip Bunce, a senior director at Credit Suisse, who identifies as “gender fluid,” “non-binary,” and without a “fixed point on the gender expression spectrum” but who occasionally likes to wear dresses and wigs. Regarding Bunce, Forstater stated, among other things, “Yes I think that male people are not women. I don’t think being a woman/female is a matter of identity or womanly feelings. It is biology.”

Because Forstater was open about her belief that men are men and women are women, even if the men feel effeminate or the women masculine (both of which are feelings and behaviors, not biological markers), staff members at the Center for Global Development started complaining that she was “transphobic.” Forstater would not back down:

I have been told that it is offensive to say “transwomen are men” or that women means “adult human female”. However since these statement are true I will continue to say them. Yes the definition of females excludes males (but includes women who do not conform with gendered norms). Policy debates where facts are viewed as offensive are dangerous. I would of course respect anyone’s self-definition of their gender identity in any social and professional context; I have no desire or intention to be rude to people.

Forstater also insists on calling people by their biological gender, not their imaginary gender. Indeed, according to the Employment Tribunal matter that led to Rowling’s transgender missteps, Forstater has been loud and proud in her vive la différence approach to the two sexes.

Below you’ll find other statements Forstater made that riled the so-called “transgender” community. You don’t need to read them all. I just want you to get a sense of the type of thing that constitutes free speech and gender heresy in modern Britain. (All quotations about  Forstater are drawn from the Employment Tribunal’s December 18, 2019 Opinion, with paragraph numbers matching those in the opinion.)

35. On 10 August 2019 the Claimant responded to a very strongly worded complaint to the Scout Association made by Gregor Murray, who describes themself as a “non-binary person”, who alleged that the Claimant had misgendering them:

28. On Twitter I referred to Murray by the pronoun ‘he’. This was not purposeful or meant to cause harm. I had simply forgotten that this man demands to be referred to by the plural pronouns “they” and “them”.

29. Murray states that my failure use the pronoun “they” in relation to the complainant breaks the third and seventh scout laws (“A Scout is friendly and considerate” and “A Scout has self-respect and respect for others”) because Murray believes that Murray is not a man. Murray also calls it “transphobic” that I recognise a man when I see one. I disagree.

30. In reality Murray is a man. It is Murray’s right to believe that Murray is not a man, but Murray cannot compel others to believe this. Women and children in particular should not be forced to lie or obfuscate about someone’s sex.

31. I reserve the right to use the pronouns “he” and “him” to refer to male people. While I may choose to use alternative pronouns as a courtesy, no one has the right to compel others to make statements they do not believe. I think it is important that people are able to refer to the sex of other people accurately and without hesitation, shame or censure. This is important for children to be able to speak up about anything that makes them feel uncomfortable, and for adults to be able to risk assess the difference between a single sex and mixed sex situation.

36. On 13 August 2019 the Claimant states when discussing the same subject: “I think that framing the question of transgender inclusion as an argument that male people should be allowed into women’s spaces discounts women’s rights to privacy and is fundamentally illiberal (it is like forcing Jewish people to eat pork).”

37. On 2 September 2019 the Claimant tweeted about her views on tans women in sport: “Short and to the point by .. “lt is unfair and unsafe for transwomen to compete in women’s sport”

38. On 3 September 2019 the Claimant posted a tweet about blood transfusion: “This is madness. The FDA and American Red Cross replaced the objective criteria of sex with the subjective criteria of self declared gender identity in screening blood donors for HIV transmission risk”.

39. In the Claimant witness statement she stated:

39.1 “I believe that people deserve respect, but ideas do not.” Para 5

39.2 “I do not believe it is incompatible to recognise that human beings cannot change sex whilst also protecting the human rights of people who identify as transgender” Para 13

39.3 “I believe that there are only two sexes in human beings (and indeed in all mammals): male and female. This is fundamentally linked to reproductive biology. Males are people with the type of body which, if all things are working, are able to produce male gametes (sperm). Females have the type of body which, if all things are working, is able to produce female gametes (ova), and gestate a pregnancy.” Para 14

39.4 “Women are adult human females. Men are adult human males.” Para 15

39.5 “Sex is determined at conception, through the inheritance (or not) of a working copy of a piece of genetic code which comes from the father (generally, apart from in very rare cases, carried on the Y chromosome).” Para 16

39.6 “Some women have conditions which mean that they do not produce ova or cannot conceive or sustain a pregnancy. Similarly, some men are unable to produce viable sperm. These people are still women and men.” Para 17

39.7 “I believe that it is impossible to change sex or to lose your sex. Girls grow up to be women. Boys grow up to be men. No change of clothes or hairstyle, no plastic surgery, no accident or illness, no course of hormones, no force of will or social conditioning, no declaration can turn a female person into a male, or a male person into a female.” Para 23

39.8 “Losing reproductive organs or hormone levels through illness or surgery does not stop someone being a woman or a man.” Para 24

39.9 “A person may declare that they identify as (or even are) a member of the opposite sex (or both, or neither) and ask others to go along with this. This does not change their actual sex.” Para 26

39.10 “There are still areas of scientific discovery about the pathways of sexual development, including chromosomal and other “disorders of sexual development” (so called “intersex” conditions), and about the psychological factors underlying transgender identification and gender dysphoria. However I do not believe that any such research will disprove the basic reality that there are two sexes” Para 60

39.11 “Under the Gender Recognition Act 2004, a person may change their legal sex. However this does not give them the right to access services and spaces intended for members of the opposite sex. It is an offence for a person who has acquired information in an official capacity about a person’s GRC to disclose that information. However this situation where a person’s sex is protected information relates to a minority of cases where a person has a GRC, is successfully “passing” in their new identity and is not open about being trans. In many cases people can identify a person’s sex on sight, or they may have known the person before transition, or the person may have made it public information that they are trans. There is no general legal compulsion for people not to believe their own eyes or to forget, or pretend to forget, what they already know, or which is already in the public domain.” Para 108

39.12 “In most social situations we treat people according to the sex they appear to be. And even when it is apparent that someone’s sex is different from the gender they seek to portray through their clothing, hairstyle, voice and mannerisms, or the name, title and pronoun they ask to be referred to by, it may be polite or kind to pretend not to notice, or to go along with their wish to be referred to in a particular way. But there is no fundamental right to compel people to be polite or kind in every situation.” Para 110

39.13 “In particular while it may be disappointing or upsetting to some male people who identify as women to be told that it is not appropriate for them to share female-only services and spaces, avoiding upsetting males is not a reason to compromise women’s safety, dignity and ability to control their own boundaries as to who gets to see and touch their bodies.”

In the following paragraph the tribunal accurately summed up Forstater’s views — views, I hasten to add, that (a) align with the reality of human history from the dawn of time and (b) align with biological reality, whether one is speaking about DNA, sex organs, hormone differences, or skeletal, muscle, and brain differences between men and women:

41. When questioned during live evidence the Claimant stated that biological males cannot be women. She consider [sic] that if a trans woman says she is a woman that is untrue, even if she has a Gender Recognition Certificate. On the totality of the Claimant’s evidence it was clear that she considers there are two sexes, male and female, there is no spectrum in sex and there are no circumstances whatsoever in which a person can change from one sex to another, or to being of neither sex. She would generally seek to be polite to trans persons and would usually seek to respect their choice of pronoun but would not feel bound to; mainly if a trans person who was not assigned female at birth was in a “woman’s space”, but also more generally. If a person has a Gender Recognition Certificate this would not alter the Claimant’s position. The Claimant made it clear that her view is that the words man and woman describe a person’s sex and are immutable. A person is either one or the other, there is nothing in between and it is impossible to change form one sex to the other.

C. Forstater lost her job and appeared before the Tribunal because, like Rosa Parks, she deliberately put herself out as a test case of British speech and employment law.

But how did Forstater end up before an Employment Tribunal in the first place? As best as I can tell, when Forstater was working at the Center for Global Development, one of the things that crossed her desk was a government proposal to reform the Gender Recognition Act (“GRA”).  As it now stands, the GRA, which was enacted in 2004, says that people who meet certain criteria can demand that the British government identify them as a sex inconsistent with their biological sex, including retrofitting their birth certificates to state the opposite of their biological sex at birth.

Under the law as it exists, people seeking to have British law erase their birth (and biological) sex and create a fiction that they are and at all times have been the opposite sex have to jump through a few hoops. The ones that matter here are that the applicant:

(a) has or has had gender dysphoria,

(b) has lived in the acquired gender throughout the period of two years ending with the date on which the application is made, [and]

(c) intends to continue to live in the acquired gender until death. . . .

Although I believe the GRA was misguided, it’s clear that the purpose behind the GRA was not to redefine biological sex. Instead, the British government willingly abandoned reality in order to people with a diagnosed mental illness feel less stressed about that their cognitive confusion. In their dealings with the government, the government will bow to their self-identification, rather than their biological reality.

This kind of humanitarian goal, coupled with its semi-objective requirements, however, were not enough for the SBBDD movement. The current push is to change the GRA so that it no longer requires a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. Instead, the activists want “self-identification.” In other words, the GRA is no longer about easing bureaucratic life for people with diagnosed gender dysphoria; instead, it’s about allowing people to create their own reality as they go.

It was in response to this proposed amendment that Forstater began to accelerate her public statements that sex is a biological reality, not a matter of personal opinion. At all times, she was careful to agree that people who have SBBDD deserve to have equality under the law and to be safe, but she consistently noted that “women and girls lose out on privacy, safety and fairness if males are allowed into changing rooms, dormitories, prisons, sports teams.”

It was Forstater’s stance on the GRA that apparently was the straw that broke the SBBDD camel’s back. For holding these traditional and biologically accurate views about men and women, Forstater could not get her contract with the Center for Global Development renewed. She appealed that firing to the Employment Tribunal.

In looking at Forstater’s statement and her appeal, it’s important to note that Forstater was not just another employee complaining about a lost job opportunity. Instead, she is analogous to Rosa Parks, heroine of the American Civil Rights Movement. Just as Rosa Parks carefully planned with Civil Rights organizations to get arrested, so too did Forstater make her statements and file an appeal in order to force the issue of SBBDD versus reality.

While her case was pending, Forstater posted the following tweet: “My belief as i set out in my witness statement is that sex is a biological fact & is immutable. There are two sexes. Men are male. Women are female. It is impossible to change sex. These were until very recently understood as basic facts of life.” Again, I think many of us would agree with Maya’s words — but that’s not the case in modern England….

D. The Employment Tribunal held against Forstater, stating that a belief in biology is “not worth of respect in a democratic society.”

On December 18, the British Employment Tribunal, in the form of Judge James Tayler, announced that it is now beyond the pale even to mention the fact that DNA and human biology matter in determining someone’s sex. Indeed, ten paragraphs into the decision, Tayler got himself (itself? theyself? Your Honors-self?) into a terrible twist trying to define normal terms such as man and woman, or mentally ill man and mentally ill woman:

“I use the term to trans woman or trans man to refer to transgender people by the gender they are living. When it is necessary to do so, I refer to sex assigned at birth. I appreciate that the Claimant objects to this term, considering that sex is observed at birth, but she did not suggest that she viewed the term “assigned” to be offensive. I consider it is broad enough to include being assigned because of observation. I will not use the term cis-woman as the Claimant finds it offensive. Where necessary to do so, I will refer to women assigned female at birth. I have sought, wherever possible, to refer to people by the pronouns they prefer; although, in some cases, I do not know the person’s preference.” (Opinion ¶ 10.)

The Court, at ¶¶ 43-44, almost reluctantly acknowledged that biology divides humans along sex lines, but then went the extra mile (nay, the extra several miles) to focus on that small (very small) percentage of human beings whose DNA puts them in the intersex category or shows some other biological confusion. This minuscule subset of the grand sweep of human sexuality becomes very important to the judge by opinion’s end, so don’t lose track of it.

You should also keep in mind as you read the decision, that the standards to Tribunal used to review Forstater’s alleged sins were not British but came from the European Convention. Thus, the core legal citations are to the ECHR or European Court of Human Rights.

(As an aside, European ideas about human rights are interesting, to say the least. In Sweden, two Eritrean refugees, armed with a knife, raped a woman for hours. The court refused to deport them, however, because they were deserters from the Eritrean military and faced reprisal if they returned, including imprisonment and re-conscription. Mull one that one over as you think about that traumatized woman.)

I will not recite all the legal authority the judge cites because it’s all very boring, bureaucratic language. Here in America, we have our blessed, and blessedly, Bill of Rights which says that the federal government has a very narrow sphere in which it can operate. Outside of that, our rights are inherent in each of us and inviolable. While states have more power over the individual than the federal government, the 14th Amendment puts some useful shackles on states as well. The Europeans, however, have endless lists of all the things that the government allows them to do or not to do, or to be or not to be. The government giveth and the government taketh away.

In addition to resenting Tayler’s dismal, boring, bureaucratic, and often meaningless citations to ECHR authority, my decades of lawyering before activist judges means that I fully understand how these judges enter the case with opinions already in place and find (or contort) the law to suit these opinions. The nature of activist jurists means that they never approach facts or law with open minds. When it comes to these types of judges, Shakespeare nailed it when he said

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart.
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!

After his laundry list of bureaucratic pronouncements, Tayler felt he had established, as a matter of law, that Forstater’s claim lacked merit.

And why did it lack merit? Well, as is typical for Leftists, Tayler’s ruling was meant to centralize the margins of society, not to stabilize the great bell curve in the center. (When I say this, I do not mean to say that the bell curve gets to abuse the margins. All citizens deserve respect and safety. I’m simply saying the bell curve, not the margins, needs to shape societal norms.)

Summed up, what Tayler said is that, because there are an infinitesimally small number of cases in which Nature screws up and people are born intersex or with other chromosomal problems, there is no merit at all to Forstater’s claim that men and women are two different parts of the same species. Moreover, bureaucratic rules trump reality and freedom of speech and thought. That’s how you end up with this risible legal, bureaucratic gobbledy-gook:

84. I consider that the Claimant’s view, in its absolutist nature, is incompatible with human dignity and fundamental rights of others. She goes so far as to deny the right of a person with a Gender Recognition Certificate to be the sex to which they have transitioned. I do not accept the Claimant’s contention that the Gender Recognition Act produces a mere legal fiction. It provides a right, based on the assessment of the various interrelated convention rights, for a person to transition, in certain circumstances, and thereafter to be treated for all purposes as the being of the sex to which they have transitioned. In Goodwin a fundamental aspect of the reasoning of the ECHR was that a person who has transitioned should not be forced to identify their gender assigned at birth. Such a person should be entitled to live as a person of the sex to which they have transitioned. That was recognised in the Gender Recognition Act which states that the change of sex applies for “all purposes”. Therefore, if a person has transitioned from male to female and has a Gender Recognition Certificate that person is legally a woman. That is not something that the Claimant is entitled to ignore.

Significantly, and I’ll discuss this more below, the opinion also buys into the absolutist belief that a mentally ill person’s feelings must override all other considerations, whether those considerations involve science, or women’s safety, or fairness between the two sexes (emphasis mine):

85. The Claimant does not accept that she should avoid the enormous pain that can be caused by misgendering a persons, even if that person has a Gender Recognition Certificate. In her statement she say [sic] of people with Gender Recognition Certificates “In many cases people can identify a person’s sex on sight, or they may have known the person before transition…. There is no general legal compulsion for people not to believe their own eyes or to forget, or pretend to forget, what they already know, or which is already in the public domain.” The Claimant’s position is that even if a trans woman has a Gender Recognition Certificate, she cannot honestly describe herself as a woman. That belief is not worthy of respect in a democratic society. It is incompatible with the human rights of others that have been identified and defined by the ECHR and put into effect through the Gender Recognition Act.

*snip*

87. It is obvious how important being accorded their preferred pronouns and being able to describe their gender is to many trans people. Calling a trans woman a man is likely to be profoundly distressing. It may be unlawful harassment. Even paying due regard to the qualified right to freedom of expression, people cannot expect to be protected if their core belief involves violating others dignity and/or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for them.

Let me repeat the core language there: “The Claimant’s position is that even if a trans woman has a Gender Recognition Certificate, she cannot honestly describe herself as a woman. That belief is not worthy of respect in a democratic society.

With those words, Britain has reached dizzying Orwellian heights: If the government says you’re a woman, even if you are manifestly a man, that dictate does not just apply to how the government treats you. It means that all people in Britain must deny reality and look to the bureaucracy and the crazy person to determine absolute truth. Moreover, in modern England, the birthplace of free speech, there is now only a qualified right to free expression and women, having painfully earned their rights in the last 100 years, must cede all of them to mentally ill men.

Biological reality has no place in modern Britain. Dickens would have known what to say: “The law is a ass — a idiot.”

It was only reluctantly that the judge conceded that Forstater could speak out against the proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act. Nevertheless, he made it clear that she couldn’t do so and still expect to be employed or employable:

86. There is nothing to stop the Claimant campaigning against the proposed revision to the Gender Recognition Act to be based more on self-identification. She is entitled to put forward her opinion that these should be some spaces that are limited to women assigned female at birth where it is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. However, that does not mean that her absolutist view that sex is immutable is a protected belief for the purposes of the EqA. The Claimant can legitimately put forward her arguments about the importance of some safe spaces that are only be available to women identified female at birth, without insisting on calling trans women men.

E. Rowling made the world aware of British policies re SBBDD because she dared to agree with biology.

It was in response to this decision that J.K. Rowling jumped in. Rowling, a billionaire member of the elite Labour class that has nothing but disdain for those ordinary Brits damaged by the elite’s policies, actually thought it was okay to say that men are men and women are women. That’s why she put out a tweet supporting Forstater’s case:

To those uninitiated in the world of so-called transgender rights and activism, the above tweet actually seems quite reasonable: Live your life as you please, with my blessing, but don’t pretend biology’s not real. Rowling quickly learned her mistake when the transgender community and its supporters went on a rampage against what they perceived as a grotesque and disgusting example of TERF-dom. I culled these tweets from Twitchy:

(In a later part of this post, you’ll see another example of the SBBDD community trying to align itself with Holocaust-era Jews. I’m one Jew who does not appreciate the comparison.)

Not all SBBDD people in England are on board with this Orwellian worldview – but if they’re not, they’d better get out of the way because the SBBDD movement will destroy them. At least that’s what two men who call themselves women discovered for stating the truth about their own condition:

A transgender woman facing disciplinary action over a T-shirt stating that she is still biologically a man has been accused of “hate speech”.

Debbie Hayton, a physics teacher in the Midlands, lives as a transgender women [sic] after changing her gender from male to female in 2012. But unlike many people in the trans-community, she does not believe her sex can be changed and is vocal about the fact that she will always biologically remain a man.

She is now potentially facing expulsion from the LGBT committee of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) for wearing a top adorned with the slogan: “Trans women are men. Get over it!”

If the TUC rules against Ms Hayton, who has sat on the committee for five years, it would mean that even transgender people face being accused of transphobia for saying that they do not believe an individual can alter the sex they were assigned at birth.

Ms Hayton, 51, who has undergone surgery and hormone treatment, wore the T-shirt at an event organised by campaign group Fair Play for Women in July, and it attracted a complaint in August.

According to the Sunday Times, 12 members of the LGBT committee wrote to Frances O’Grady, general secretary of the TUC, a federation of unions representing 5.5m working Britons, saying that by wearing the T-shirt Ms Hayton had “gone beyond discourse, and the expression of alternative viewpoints, and is now propagating hate speech against the trans community”.

The case against Ms Hayton comes after fellow transgender woman Kristina Jayne Harrison told an employment tribunal in November that attempts to “legally coerce society” into treating males as females in all circumstances is “inevitably doomed to fail”.

Ms Harrison, a 54-year-old transgender woman who was born a man, gave evidence in support of Maya Forstater, a tax researcher who was dismissed from her job at a US think tank for tweeting that “trans men cannot be women”.

*snip*

Prior to last week’s decision on Ms Forstater’s case, Ms Harrison told the tribunal: “The process of having surgery or hormone treatment cannot ultimately transform your sex. Every cell in my body has male chromosomes. I have a prostate. These things cannot be completely deconstructed. It is not possible to be biologically female. But that does not mean I can’t live a fulfilling life being treated as a woman.”

III. What happened in England is being pushed here, in America.

At this point, many of you are saying, “It can’t happen here.” But of course it can.  Just think about the Red Cross accepting a person’s self-identification when it comes to screening for HIV risks. Here are just a few more recent examples of it happening here:

Transgender worker suing Nike for $1.1 million for pronoun abuse

A transgender former Nike contractor is seeking $1.1 million in damages from the sporting goods giant for allegedly allowing gender identity-based harassment.

According to a civil lawsuit filed this week, Nike and Mainz Brady Group, a staffing firm that hired workers for Nike, discriminated against computer engineer Jazz Lyles, who identifies as transmasculine and prefers the pronouns they/them/their. The complaint was filed with Multnomah Circuit Court in Oregon.

During Lyles’ tenure at Nike — from May 2017 to September 2018 — the engineer was repeatedly “misgendered” by coworkers, the complaint said. While Lyles notified management about the issue multiple times, the companies allegedly failed to implement any policies, procedures and trainings around the use of gender pronouns in the workplace.

“When someone refuses to acknowledge a person’s gender identity or insists on referring to them by a gender to which they do not identify (called misgendering), this causes real and significant harm,” read the complaint. “This is particularly true when a person is misgendered repeatedly on a daily basis.”

Transgender “woman” pepper-sprayed teens on bus in Washington state.

A transgender woman who pepper-sprayed four teenagers on a bus before they chased her down and beat her may also be charged with a crime after investigators reviewed video surveillance from the bus and determined she was the aggressor in an “unprovoked attack,” according to the King County Sheriff’s Office.

Originally, investigators with the sheriff’s office considered the woman to be the victim and the teens to be the aggressors, spokesman Sgt. Ryan Abbott said in a statement on Friday.

The woman was chased down and beaten after she got off the King County Metro bus at South 180th Street and Andover Park West in Tukwila on Dec. 10. Some onlookers heard slurs directed at the woman’s gender identity and the four teens were booked into the youth detention center on investigation of assault and malicious harassment, the state’s hate-crime statute.

Now, the woman also faces an assault charge, Abbott said.

The woman had told investigators she had a threatening encounter with the teens at the Tukwila International Boulevard Station before they all got on the bus. She said the teens made comments to her that felt threatening and derogatory, according to the sheriff’s office.

However, surveillance video showed that the woman was the aggressor, Abbott said.

“A review of video from onboard the Metro coach shows the female to be the aggressor, using pepper spray, in an unprovoked attack on the four juveniles sitting at the back of the bus,” Abbott said. “The female initially claimed the group of juveniles threatened her, which led her to pepper-spraying the juveniles in an attempt to ‘neutralize’ a perceived threat,” Abbott said. “According to our detective, the bus footage disproved claims that the juveniles had threatened the female.”

ACLU demands tampons in men’s rooms for “menstrual equity.” To understand this, you need to know that the ACLU has been arguing that it’s unfair to impose sales taxes on tampons because only women buy them.

How can we recognize that barriers to menstrual access [] are a form of sex discrimination without erasing the lived experiences of trans men and non-binary people who menstruate, as well as women who don’t? Some arguments that challenge discriminatory laws based on sex-linked characteristics have made the point that “only women” menstruate, get pregnant, or breastfeed. But that is not a full or accurate portrayal — and menstrual stigma and period poverty can hit trans and non-binary people particularly hard:

Trans people are three times as likely to be unemployed and more than twice as likely to be living in poverty as the general population. Those who are disabled, people of color, or undocumented immigrants are especially likely to be unemployed and living in poverty.

While free menstrual products are not uniformly provided in women’s restrooms, they are almost never available in men’s restrooms, even for pay. Men’s restrooms are also less likely to have a place to dispose of these products conveniently, privately, and hygienically.

Similarly, women’s homeless shelters sometimes provide menstrual products, but men’s typically don’t. Some domestic violence shelters exclude trans and non-binary people — even though more than half have experienced intimate partner violence. Those shelters often provide a variety of types of support, including access to menstrual products for those who need them.

While access to menstrual products in women’s prisons is often inadequate, it is far worse in men’s prisons. Trans and non-binary people may be incarcerated in either.

Menstruation is not the only reason trans and non-binary people may need menstrual products. Trans women and non-binary people may also need pads and liners for months after vaginoplasty, and occasionally at other times. Some who take estrogen also experience period symptoms such as pain and nausea and may need medication to manage these symptoms. Those who experience endometriosis or adenomyosis, conditions that can cause continuous heavy bleeding, often face barriers to treatment, as well as an ongoing and often unmet need for pads and tampons.

I’m hoping that, having read this far, you still recall my point about so-called transgender activists likening themselves to Jews in Nazi Germany. You won’t be surprised, therefore, to see the ACLU having the chutzpah to compare tampons for men to yarmulkes:

In the context of the tampon tax, for example, Dean Erwin Chemerinsky harkened to a famous remark by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia that a tax on yarmulkes is a tax on Jews. By analogy, a tax on menstrual products is a tax on women — even though not all women menstruate, and some men and non-binary people do.

*snip*

Take yarmulkes again. Not all Jewish people wear yarmulkes, and some people who aren’t Jewish do wear yarmulkes (for example, if attending a Jewish religious service). Still, if a legislature decided to tax people for wearing yarmulkes, or to impose sales tax on yarmulkes but not similar items, that would be anti-Semitism, and it would violate the constitution. Similarly, imposing a sales tax on menstrual products but not similar items is sexist, and violates the constitution.

As a follow-on to this insane menstrual show, back in October it came out that, in response to a single complaint, Always, the company that makes products for menstruation, removed the female symbol (♀) from its packing because it offended menstruating women who think they’re men. What you’re seeing with the Always rebranding is what happens when you have 25 years of college grads, all indoctrinated in hard Left studies, entering the business world.

Women’s sports in America are also being profoundly affected by men who claim SBBDD, perhaps because they’re really mentally ill or perhaps because they’re lousy athletes when they’re up against men. Here, again, are a few examples:

Fallon Fox, a man who claims to be a woman and insists on competing as a woman in Mixed Martial Arts, shattered a female competitor’s eye socket and left her with a concussion. I did MMA for years and, as a small woman who rolled with men and women both large and small, I can tell you that even the strongest woman is less dense and powerful than the weakest man with whom I’ve rolled.

Terry Miller, a boy, and Andraya Yearwood, another boy, took first and second place at the Connecticut state indoor track meet. Aside from marginalizing girls, this also means that two biological high school girls lost chances at college scholarships.

A male runner calling himself CeCe Telfer, trained as a man, then announced he was a woman and promptly won an NCAA Division II women’s track and field championship.

Two other examples about the male takeover of women’s sports come from the Anglosphere. Rachel McKinnon, a Canadian man who claims to be a woman, has completely dominated women’s cycling. Meanwhile, Callum Mouncey, aka Hannah Mouncey, a 6’3” tall, 250 pound, heavily muscled Australian man who insists he is a woman is dominating women’s handball, in large part because he is a danger to the women on the field.

Sometimes, the gender madness works in the other direction, although it’s much less common. Schuyler Bailar is biologically female. Bailar was an extremely good swimmer, so good that she won a scholarship to be on Harvard’s women’s swim team. Once at Harvard, Bailar announced that she was a man and Harvard, living by political correctness, promptly invited her to swim on the men’s team. At that moment, Bailar went from being a top-flight swimmer, who would have been a huge benefit to the women’s swim team, to being a drag on the men’s swim team. During her entire time at Harvard, she only placed once, and that was a third place in her last year. What Bailar did was very unfair to some young man who could have qualified for her place on the team. That unknown man matters too.

And of course, let’s not forget that Bruce Jenner was indeed one of the world’s greatest athletes – as a man. However, once he became a hormonally and surgically augmented man (new breasts, same old penis) whom he christened Caitlyn, he won Glamour’s Woman of the Year Award. Glamour, founded in 1939, again illustrates what 25 years of Leftist indoctrination in America’s colleges will do.

IV. The SBBDD movement is undermining core values, not to mention reality

A. Proggies don’t believe their own shtick.

As you think about the ways in which the SBBDD movement is undermining Western values, keep in mind that Progressives do not believe their own shtick. We know this because whenever a person with gender confusion pops up in the media, whether for having done something or having been victimized, that person will invariably be described as a “trans woman” or a “trans man.”

If the Proggies really believed that a “trans woman is a woman,” why are they referring to the person as a “transgender woman”? Same goes for those “transgender men.” In other words, both the media, which is almost entirely Leftist, and the Democrat political class, which is by definition Leftist, never talk about these people as “women” or “men.” They are always described as “trans.”

The insistence on attaching that term “trans,” which means movement, to people who have allegedly transformed themselves, is a recognition that these people have not, in fact, reached their desired sex identification. They are pretenders. A trans woman is not a woman — he is a man who wishes he were a woman, wants to act in public as if he were, expects people to treat him accordingly, and now demands that the law and society accept his preferences as reality.

B. The end of free speech.

In SBBDD world, words are so damaging they can be met with violence and government silencing. If you haven’t already done so, pay attention to the fact that, in both the Maya Forstater and the Nike cases, the claimants seek damages because their feelings were hurt. Incidentally, you’ll see the same claim about hurt feelings being tantamount to damage in the latest LGBTQ etc. attack on a sympathetic publication:

Gay rights advocacy group GLAAD complained to Politico that its use of the term “pillow fight” in its coverage of Thursday night’s Democratic primary debate was “sexist and homophobic.”

“For women and LGBTQ people at the workplace, hearing phrases like ‘dramatic,’ ‘over the top,’ and even ‘pillow fight’ during office disagreements fosters negative stereotypes and diminishes a person simply because of who they are,” GLAAD’s Drew Anderson wrote in an email.

*snip*

“Disagreements happen in politics, but using these loaded terms during disputes feed into the sexist and homophobic tropes that simply have no place in our political coverage and rhetoric,” Anderson wrote in his email.

In its Friday morning newsletter, Politico wrote that offending readers was not its intent. “Pillow fight, in our mind, connotes a fight where no one draws blood,” the publication wrote.

In other words, sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will really hurt me – so much so that you must pay me money, silence yourself, and rewrite the rules of humanity and biology.

Part of this “words are violence” stance, which activists claim justifies countervailing physical or political violence, is politically motivated, of course. I also think that part of the aggression around words comes about because SBBDD men manage to combine the aggression of men with the emotionalism of women – and these men are the most vocal actors in the political SBBDD movement:

Regardless of the motivations, it’s clear that the whole SBBDD movement is a leading edge in the Leftist effort to clamp down on “hate speech” — which is, of course, any speech with which the Left disagrees. Reality, though, untainted by Leftist politics and by the SBBDD’s prominence in academia, sports, and the media, is that SBBDD is currently the purview of perverts, tragically mentally ill and mentally troubled people, and weak male athletes who see opportunities in competing as women.

C. The end of third wave feminism (which may well be a good thing).

I admire the TERFs’ willingness to take on the SBBDD movement. They are correct that SBBDD men who insist on entering the female sphere are bringing with them male attributes that overwhelm female attributes and abilities.

Of course, the SBBDD men also reveal that the third wave feminists have been operating for years by a double standard, which states that men and women are equal, except when women are better. The fact that men can quickly destroy women in women-only spheres says that, at least physically, that’s just not true.

I’ve always supported first wave feminism (women get the vote and full civil rights), and second wave feminism (equal work for equal pay, equal opportunity for equal abilities), but I’ve never accepted either the misandry of third wave feminism or its lunatic claim that women are in all things better than men or that, in all things physical, they are the equal of men. On this one, I have to give credit to TERFs for using the SBBDD movement to show that men and women are neither better than nor worse than the other. They are different from each other, and those differences need to be cultivated and respected in a healthy society.

D. The deconstruction of femininity

Femininity means behaviors that present as feminine. Many of these are cultural: Women traditionally have worn dresses and men trousers (although this is also a nod to biology, because these different clothes reflect different urination styles in an era before privacy and zippers). In the modern human world, women have worn bright plumes and make-up, while men have dressed in drab colors. We are the opposite of peacocks.

Other differences are innate and tied to biology. Women, for example, have a swaying walk because their hips are constructed differently from men. Women are also usually more fastidious than men because they have more smell receptors (something that, in prehistoric times, probably prevented them from killing children with spoiled food). It also appears that the differences between men’s communication methods (hierarchical) and women’s (collegial) are innate, because these differences are observed in children as young as 2 or 3.

And then there are the major physical differences: In the bell curve of normal biology, women have no facial hair, limited body hair, prominent breasts and hips, and female genitals. Men have facial hair, body hair, neither prominent breasts or hips, and male genitals. Men have more overall musculature than women and proportionately much greater upper body musculature than women. Over the centuries, western attire has always sought to accentuate these physical differences, mostly to advertise what the two sexes bring to procreation (child-carrying and breast feeding abilities in women versus strength, i.e., the ability to provide food and protection, in men).

The SBBDD movement seeks to erase these differences, whether innate or cultural. For example a man who calls himself Anita Green has sued United States of America Pageants in federal court alleging unlawful discrimination (and note, again, the reference to an individual’s feelings as a driving force behind a demand to massive culture change):

Lawyers for Anita Green filed suit Tuesday against United States of America Pageants in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon, alleging the organization unlawfully discriminated against Green by limiting the competition to “natural born females,” according to court documents reviewed by The Daily Caller News Foundation.

*snip*

“I felt as though I was being invalidated. I felt as though the organization was saying I am not a woman and I’m not woman enough,” Green told Willamette Week. “This is about justice and it’s about righting a wrong. No matter what anyone thinks about pageants, trans women should have the choice to compete just like anyone else.”

Over in England, a place called Born studios in Manchester teaches men who think they’re women how to be feminine:

I love that line: “The real problem is hiding the beard shadow.” But what’s really important in the video is the way all of the people interviewed, not to mention the BBC itself, elide the glaring contradiction behind Born’s very existence – if these guys are actually women, shouldn’t they already be feminine? The only way for an SBBDD man to be feminine is to ape female stereotypes.

E. Severing parent-child relationships

One of the most disturbing aspects of the SBBDD movement is the effort to severe the parent-child relationship. Just the other day, a report came out of Wisconsin about a school district’s efforts to remove parents from the decisions about a child’s claimed SBBDD:

Madison, Wisconsin, schools have an official guidance document that allows schools to keep a child’s mental illness secret from parents:

The school has a “guidance document . . . that enables children — of any age — to change gender identity at school without parental notice or consent. WILL notes the policy goes as far as instructing district employees to conceal and even deceive parents about the gender identity their son or daughter has claimed at school.

“In sensitive, personal matters involving children’s well-being, a public school district should not, and cannot, make decisions reserved for parents,” WILL’s president and founder Rick Esenberg said in a statement. “While MMSD may think it is operating in the best interests of children, they have adopted policies that violate crucial, constitutionally recognized parental rights.”

Tim LeMonds, public information officer for the school district, tells the Wisconsin Law Journal that MMSD does’t [sic] have an identity policy; it has a “guidance document that is based on practice, not policy.”

But the guidance document, which cites school safety as a reason for keeping a student’s personal information confidential from parents, still keeps a student’s personal information confidential from parents. That includes elementary school-aged children who may express gender change preferences to a teacher or school staff member.

We’ve seen other stories about court’s or governments holding that a parent must accept the SBBDD being pushed on a child or lose custody.

Religious Parents Lose Custody Of Transgender Teen For Refusing Hormone Treatment.

This New Law in Canada Could Remove Kids From Parents Who Reject Transgender Ideology

We see the same thing, of course, in Leftist laws across America making sure parents have no say in a daughter’s abortion, no matter how young that child may be.

Contrast those anti-parent behaviors with a first-hand story (unproven) about a Massachusetts girl who claims that her teacher wanted to get her parents involved in a decision about her hijab:

Today I was happy. I had completely stopped covering my hair and was speaking confidently with other people. I was just so happy, I wanted to go home and dream about it all night.

In math class, when the bell rang to switch, a teacher asked me about my hijab. I told her that I just took it off and it was no big deal. She then told me that it was important to uphold culture, she then asked if my parents knew what I was doing. Being the idiot I am, I said no and asked if she would tell. To my absolute horror, she said yes.

My whole world stopped. I know what would happen if she said a word about this to my mother. I asked her why she would do that and she said: “because it’s your culture! And you are an exception to be able to wear the hijab as a uniform, so don’t just take advantage of that.”

*snip*

[A second teacher] led me to the empty classroom and sat me down along with the other [first] teacher. They gave me a whole lecture about why I shouldn’t have taken it off and my parents are just protecting me, And kept bringing up boyfriends even though I don’t want one. After the talk I just put my hijab back on and left, it was time to go home now.

*snip*

Update #2: I spoke with the principal. He said that it’s my choice how I dress as long as it abides by the dress code. He said if those teachers want to talk to my mother, they can talk to him about it, so I’m free to take off my hijab. I’m going to try to take it off again, I’ll update again if she tries anything.

F. Attacks on normal sexuality

In a world in which the SBBDD crowd does not hold power over freedom of speech, I believe it’s completely obvious that the SBBDD represents a very narrow – and therefore by definition not normal – slice of the spectrum that is human sexuality. I’ve told for 30 years the story of a woman I know whose father perfectly represents just how mixed up the SBBDD cohort really is.

Abby Doe, while not exactly estranged from her parents, certainly wasn’t close to them. That’s why, after her mother died, she didn’t visit her father for an extended period of time. However, one day when she found herself in her hometown, she finally decided to visit her father.

When Abby arrived at the apartment building in which he lived, she was confused to see that the nameplate on the apartment’s front doorbell, rather than saying “John Doe,” said “Jane Doe.” Still, this was the apartment in which her parents had lived and it was the same last name, so Abby rang the bell.

To Abby’s surprise, her father answered the door in full drag, complete with wig, make-up, nice dress, and platform shoes. He explained to her that he had always been a transvestite, something that he and his wife had kept secret from Abby.

Once his wife died, though, Abby’s father had started dressing in women’s clothes full-time. By doing so, he came to realize that he wasn’t a man at all. Instead, he was a woman trapped in a man’s body. He had recently decided to take make it official: he was going to take hormones and have surgery. His first step was to change his name, hence the doorbell information.

Abby is an open-minded woman so she considered her father’s lifestyle choice more amusing than shocking. Also, as I said, while she wasn’t estranged from her parents, she wasn’t close to them, so her father’s decision had no impact on her.

About a year later, a year during which she never spoke with her father, Abby once again found herself in her hometown. Yet again, surprises awaited her.

Now, the doorbell name tag had reverted to “John Doe,” rather than “Jane Doe.” Moreover, when Abby’s father answered the door, he was dressed in traditional male attire, which meant no make-up, no wig, no dress, and no fabulous shoes.

“What’s going on, Dad?” Abby asked.

“It’s like this,” her father answered. “Even though I know I’m a woman, I’m still sexually attracted to women. That means I’m a lesbian. And I’ve learned that I have much more success as a lesbian if I look like a man.”

In a stunning act of projection, a cohort of SBBDD activists are claiming that people who don’t want to have sex with someone who is biologically the same sex they are (e.g., men not wanting to have sex with another man who insists he is a woman) are the ones with a mental illness. They are, claim the SBBDD crowd, “transphobic.” This post is long enough, so I’ll leave that notion here for you to make of it what you will.

V. Advocating a sane approach to dealing with people suffering from SBBDD.

I’ll end by suggesting a different approach to treating people who believe they are the opposite of their biological sex, one that doesn’t involve destroying the West’s institutions or using mutilating surgery and toxic chemicals to treat these damaged people. People who believe they are “transgender” should be treated with a combination of appropriate psychological intervention, which would address trauma or something such as autism, and, if called for, hormone treatments that align with their biological gender.

While some people are politically SBBDD, which means they use identifying as the opposite gender as a way to advance their career or drive fundamental societal change, others are just deeply troubled people and, indeed, are often autistic people who find social interactions confusing, who are sometimes distant from their own bodies, and who can easily be bullied into denying their sex and embracing its opposite. As to these people, we do them a disservice by buying into their SBBDD. This is like saying that the way to help an anorexic girl is to put her on a diet rather than treating her warped sense that she’s too fat or saying that the best way to help a transabled person is to allow her to pour acid into her eyes so she can realize her dream of being blind.

In the sane world in which I live, it’s child abuse to give kids presenting with SBBDD so-called “corrective” surgery that slices off healthy sexual organs. It’s equally abusive when done to mentally ill adults.

It’s also child abuse to give these same kids presenting with SBBDD puberty blocking hormones or, worse, hormones of the gender opposite to their biological gender. These hormones can cause cancer and sterility. And honestly, if you’re going to give hormones to a child (or to an adult), why not give male hormones to a confused boy and female hormones to a confused girl, thereby aligning their hormones with their biological body?

Intelligent hormone treatment along with psychological intervention to deal with underlying issues (abuse, autism, etc.), should put to rest most of this SBBDD issue roiling society and undermining norms. Only an insane political correctness stops us from examining whether it’s better to align people with their natural, biological gender, as opposed to turning them into a Frankenstein’s monster of mutilated body parts soaked in a chemical soup.

UPDATE: I’ve posted an addendum in which I add a few additional thoughts to this post.