A Completely Obvious (To Me) Parallel
can you solve the puzzle?
Sometimes I wish I could get a breakdown — like a credit card statement — showing where my brain’s caloric energy goes.
I want to scroll through an app and see how much I “spent” on mathematics vs sex, Star Trek vs the Four Noble Truths.
If that ever becomes possible, “Am I insane?” will no doubt show up as a consistent line item — easily 10% in the best of times. Because sometimes I’m sure I see a pattern no one else sees. And in a world where everyone’s stray thoughts are visible online, the fact that no one else mentions it starts to feel like proof that I’m the crazy one.
It’s happening again. So this time, I’m testing it.
If the comments fill up with people who see it too, maybe next month’s budget will have less spent on doubt.
If not... well. I’ll deal with that.
In the last year or so, something has shifted in the world of gender activism. People who once bent over backwards to be kind — to accommodate, to affirm — are hitting their limit. The tone has changed.
What was once “Let’s be patient and respectful” has curdled, in many quarters, into “I don’t give a fuck about the feelings of dudes in dresses.”
The process of arriving at that shift — sometimes called “peak trans” — often comes with a personal jolt. A niece who seemed like a future butch lesbian becomes, overnight, your “nephew.” A quirky, spectrum-y college freshman comes home with breasts and a castration surgery booked for spring break. Suddenly, you’re expected to smile and nod as if this is the most normal thing in the world.
But more and more, that jolt doesn’t have to be personal. These days, a person can peak just by paying attention.
Because eventually, you realize: they actually mean it.
When they say that trans women are women and must be allowed in women’s sports — and that you’re a bigot if you object — they’re not exaggerating. They’re not asking for a courtesy, a gentle fiction to smooth over social discomfort. This isn’t Uncle Ray “dying of cancer” in 1987, or politely calling the guy who talks to mailboxes “eccentric.”
They’re not asking you to be kind.
They’re demanding of you that you agree.
And they’ve done an impressive job institutionalizing that demand. In schools, especially.
The next generation isn’t learning to be polite. They’re learning to believe.
I heard a story — and I believe it to be true1 — from a teenage boy I employ. He’s been helping me with errands and chores for a couple years. The kind of work you’d assign to a reliable son or a good husband, if you had one.
He has a younger brother, age 8, who’s just finishing third grade. When the boy was in second grade, their parents had to fight — hard — to get him out of a weekly classroom ritual called “Gender Circle.”
Every week, the kids gathered for a story. Sometimes it was a Pride parade book, like Grandad’s Pride. But often, it was a transition tale: a trans child, animal, or magical creature. And after enough stories, something settled in for the boy — the way fairytales do. The idea that growing up happy meant changing who you are.
That becoming a girl was just part of becoming an adult.
He came home in tears. Not because he was bullied or shamed. Because he was confused. He didn’t want to be a mommy. He didn’t understand that not wanting it was allowed.
At “Gender Circle,” kids introduced themselves with names and pronouns — updated weekly, in case anyone changed. And when someone did change, the class erupted into celebration. The teacher led them in a “Welcome Song.” The child got a star moment. The new identity was practiced and praised for days.
My employee — older brother to the confused little boy — is white, male, intelligent, athletic, from a stable home, and very aware of how little that earns him in school. He’s kept his head down for years. Knew that one wrong sentence, one misstep, and he could be labeled “unsafe.” And that label? It could cost him a team spot, a scholarship, a future.
So he built a fake version of himself. A school-self. Woke, careful, and exhausting. He told me once how tired he was. How much he looked forward to the day he wouldn’t have to pretend anymore.
I think about that every time I see a Twitter debate about trans athletes in women’s sports.
For years, people proposed what they thought was a brilliant compromise: “Just have two categories! Women, and then a open category. Let anyone compete there.” It sounded so reasonable. So fair.
But that suggestion comes up less now. People are starting to get it.
Fairness was never the point.
The point was power. The point was forcing others to play along — not for kindness, but for control. To compel affirmation. To rewrite the rules of recognition itself.
And it wasn’t just about trans women in women’s spaces.
When a female-bodied teen transitions and demands access to boys’ locker rooms or sports teams, no one asks if the boys are okay. No one asks if their privacy matters. Girls’ boundaries are erased. Boys are taught they’re not allowed to have any.
Opposing any of this — even gently — has been painted as violence. Bigotry. I’ve been told, more than once, that I deserve to die for the things I believe. That my views kill people. That referring to Bruce Jenner as the 1976 men’s decathlon champion constitutes deadly, genocidal violence.
That, too, is part of the pattern. This isn’t a movement that tolerates dissent. It doesn’t pause to consider whether some of its adherents might be wrong.
It has the zeal of religion — but without grace.
And here we are. A world where indoctrinating children into one narrow ideological vision is not only accepted — it’s celebrated. A world where very young children have to perform this ideological vision as a matter of course. As a normal, standard part of life.
A world where seemingly reasonable compromises are waved away, not because they’re unworkable, but because compromise was never the goal.
A world where one side’s violence is justified speech, and the other side’s speech is treated as violence.
Where one side trains children to believe — and the other is told that if they resist, it’s because they’re cruel.
And the loudest, most aggressive voices? Often, they’re not even part of the group they claim to defend. They’ve built a sense of identity around being an ally — the kind that needs to be seen doing the right thing, saying the right things, demanding the right things.
They posture as protectors, but what they’re protecting most is their own self-image.
And then — always — someone chimes in with the same tired refrain: “But what about the good ones? The ones who just want to live their lives in peace?”
“The ones who don’t share the extremism?”
Shouldn’t we keep trying for a compromise, even if it puts our own vulnerable ones in danger, for the sake of the ones who aren’t extremists? For the ones who don’t agree with the worst of them, for the ones who aren’t violent and insane?
Yes, of course, what the lunatics are doing is wrong — but don’t we owe it to the ones who are innocent to not defend ourselves too aggressively?
And that, too, is part of the pattern.
Anyway.
If you’ve read this far and you see it — you see it — leave a comment.
Let me know I’m not crazy.
Yet.
Barring unforeseen circumstances, I will not be posting at all until at least Friday, May 2. My intention is to wrap up some stuff on Friday, April 25 and then do an offline week. I need to take some radical action to keep from spiraling into depression again, but I’ve written a lot lately, so I hope nobody will mind if I take a break.
I’ve spoken to the mother, and
has invited her onto his podcast. She isn’t ready for that yet, but I hope it happens eventually. This story is the tip of the iceberg.
I paid up so I could comment. I can't let this go.
"Gender Circle" is child abuse, criminal child abuse. The people who do that belong in prison. This is not natural. It is not based on science. It is a cult behavior, that should not be tolerated whatsoever. It is criminal predators destroying children's lives. And it must be stopped.
They are deliberately confusing children, to get them in this psychological/medical pipeline, which is incredibly well-funded and only goes one way. The whistleblowers have been cancelled. This whole scene is absolutely obscene. There are books on this. Check out Abigail Shrier's Irreversible Damage or perhaps her Bad Therapy.
This gender confusion is entirely a social contagion. Previously I had seen it picked up on social media in middle school, but drummed into their heads in kindergarten is disgusting and vile.
History will view this period as one of the lowest points in the history of the human race. Ideologically blinded zealots set up over 100 medical chop shops in the USA to mutilate the bodies of children who would otherwise likely grow up to be gay. Obama said all insurance must cover all gender treatments, which opened the blank checks to finance an entire cottage industry. And here we are.
Shellenberger at Public Did an expose of the WPATH emails. They are the leading "International Body" to set the policy, which many countries have followed. Their leaked internal emails show they knew they had no scientific justification and that they were making it all up as they went along.
This is not science. This should be the biggest scandal in decades, that must be shut down. No child should be exposed to these predatory perverts.
You are most assuredly not crazy. I have been watching this pattern repeat numerous times as it migrates from one group to another over the years. You commented “The point was power. The point was forcing others to play along — not for kindness, but for control. To compel affirmation. To rewrite the rules of recognition itself.”
This is exactly correct and if we give into this insanity, the civilization we know will collapse.