By Will Franken
Monday, March 07, 2016
When Bruce Jenner, as he was then still known, granted an
interview to Diane Sawyer in advance of his transition into Caitlyn, the online
commentary from the Left immediately precipitating the interview was
predictably supportive, if not outright sanctimonious. Yet when Jenner
responded to Sawyer’s sycophantic praise of Obama by not only stating that he
“wasn’t a fan” but going so far as to out himself as a Republican, the online
commentary from the Left turned on a dime, becoming equally predictable in its
knee-jerk contemptuousness and ignorance.
A good majority of the comments following the interview
unearthed a primary struggle in the liberal mindset of reconciling individual
life choices with a collective political agenda. In essence, the asinine question
was raised: “How can one be both transgendered and conservative?” To those of
us imbued with a healthy mistrust of collectivism, the answer to this is
startlingly obvious.
Real consistency—one that manifests itself in the
practice of individual personal choice—paradoxically appears to the Left as
inconsistency. This calls to mind Margaret Thatcher’s famous hierarchy of
convictions over consensus, and is understandable when considering that today’s
liberals are themselves the very embodiment of inconsistency.
Gay rights advocates support Palestine over Israel.
Progressives encourage a righteous contempt of authority, unless the authority
happens to be a far-reaching socialist government. Career politicians speaking
on climate change are transformed into altruistic scientists completely devoid
of profit motive. And, of course, all fundamentalist religions are evil, so
please stop Islamophobia.
To Be a Liberal,
You Only Have to Contradict Yourself
Truly, only one thing is required to be a member in good
standing with the Left. Acolytes simply have to swallow, unquestioningly, the
entire contradictory lot of their bumper sticker propositions. Just when it
seems their minds are about to short-circuit from the cognitive dissonance
inherent in harbouring such blatant inconsistencies, a multitude of pompous
academics and overpaid entertainers are there at the ready to help shout power to truth—not, as is too
often insipidly claimed, speak truth to
power.
To be sure, my brief life as a transgendered female
living in the Tower Hamlets borough of London brought to life in a very
palpable way the unresolved contradictions liberals have to live every day. Taking
note of the hipsters who invariably stood passively by whilst Asian and Arabic
immigrants spewed invective at me for my appearance, I was often reminded of
the old horror film “Scanners,” anticipating a point where onlooking liberals’
heads would explode from the complicated process of deciding whose side to
take.
That’s right. For seven months in 2015 I lived full-time,
albeit unconvincingly, as a woman named Sarah. Until then, I had always
considered myself, for lack of a better term, a periodic crossdresser.
Sometimes I would go for six months at a time without appearing in female
attire, while at others I would spend every night for a week cross-dressed.
However, following a breakup in March of last year and a
move from North to East London, I unpacked my ladies’ apparel and began, for
all intents and purposes, living as Sarah. Some men go out on the drink to
recover from a failed relationship. I learned how to add colour to my wardrobe.
If I speak with irreverence on this topic, it’s not only
because I’ve lived the experience, but also that my disdain for political
correctness necessitates me regarding nothing, even my own personal history, as
sacred.
There’s Only Cash
in Being Transgender for Its Own Sake
In late June, I changed my name on Facebook from Will to
Sarah and in doing so garnered the interest of the United Kingdom’s leading
liberal paper, The Guardian. I had
been performing comedy for around 15 years by that point, so my story was
noteworthy given that I was the first comedian to “transition” mid-career and,
thanks to Caitlyn, transgenderism had become the new cause celebre.
I readily agreed to a lengthy interview and photo shoot
for The Guardian (what libertarian
comedian these days couldn’t use the publicity?) and with that, Sarah was soon
established as a minor heroine amongst the comedy community. Missives of
support and congratulations poured in, from the lowly open-mikers to some of
the most established fixtures of British comedy. The BBC suddenly resurfaced to
ask if I had any new ideas. Reputable London literary publishers inquired if I
had ever thought of putting pen to paper.
Each time, I found myself hoping against hope that their
interest went beyond transgenderism. And when I presented them with unique
creative concepts that did not entail the topic du jour, their lack of enthusiasm was sadly all too evident. It
wasn’t long before I could feel the artistic pigeonholing taking effect. For
someone who had spent his entire adult life decrying the ascent of identity
politics, I was now poised to cash in yet had no interest in doing so.
Indeed, I’m pleased to say that throughout the entirety
of those seven months, although I may have temporarily altered my identity, my
political outlook had not changed one iota. At no point did it ever occur to
me, “Gosh, these liberals certainly are nice and accepting, I think I’ll take
another look at socialism.”
As always, I defended free-market capitalism and argued
against the proliferation of radical Islam—although at first with considerably
less expletive-laden shouting than I would have engaged in as Will. My shows
throughout the month of August contained my most brutal satires yet against
jihadism and Western cowardice. Nightly, I closed each performance with a quote
from Aayan Hirsi Ali and a dedication to the victims of the Charlie Hebdo massacre.
The Freedom to Be
Honest
If punters had been expecting a clichéd hour of
saccharine personal honesty, they would have left sorely disappointed. I was
not about to be neutered creatively or ideologically because of a lifestyle
decision.
In fact, in many ways, being Sarah allowed me to get
across some necessary conservative perspectives quite foreign to the artistic
milieu. For example, when asked about my thoughts on the Syrian refugee crisis,
I would calmly opine, notwithstanding the death knell to European culture it
represented, on a more immediate and pragmatic level, saying the last thing on
a transgender female’s wish list would be another influx into East London of
oversexed religious male bigots.
At times my offstage conservative comments would elicit
sentiments such as “Look, Sarah, I agree with about 80 percent of what you’re
saying, but. . .” which I once terminated with the wry observation, “I think
you agree with a hundred percent of
what I’m saying, but you’re just subtracting an arbitrary 20 percent so you
don’t have to completely restructure your political identity on this topic.”
On other occasions, I was heartened to witness
individuals coming out of a different and much more restraining closet when,
after honing in on something I’d said, they’d lean forward and whisper
cautiously and confidentially, “I’m . . . not a socialist either.”
It Was the
Pronouns that Got Me
Admittedly, I was at first cantankerous when it came to
pronouns. But here I must be honest and say that whenever I did get ruffled
when someone used a “he” instead of a “she,” it was because an illusion I was
hoping to maintain was being shattered. When groups of young Middle Eastern men
in the queue at McDonald’s were yelling “faggot” and “gayboy,” for instance, it
certainly didn’t help me feel any more ladylike when the woman at the register
would shout back, “He wants those
four double cheeseburgers plain!”
I found my reaction to the pronoun issue was particularly
troubling, given that one of the aspects of modern leftism I most deplore is
the redefinition of terms. Lazy tenured academics insisting, against all
empirical objectivity, that hip-hop artists are the Beethovens of today,
students rebranding Islamic terrorists as freedom fighters, and—yes—a
six-foot-five man in a cheap synthetic wig with no intention of undergoing
hormone therapy, let alone sexual reassignment surgery, insisting he be
referred to as “she.”
Precisely because I came to regard internally what I was
attempting externally as the maintenance of an illusion, and because of myriad
other incidents and psychological factors I’ve already outlined in various
publications, I made the decision last September to leave Sarah behind and
return to Will.
Never one to shy away from grandiose hero worship, I now
compare my seven-month stint as a female to the Beatles’ 1967 India holiday to
study meditation under the Maharishi. It was something I was initially eager to
explore and, indeed, would go so far as to say I felt I had to explore. Yet by
the end, disenchantment had set in, along with an acceptance of reality,
leaving me more grateful than ever to return to manhood. This was a decision I
made for myself. Not, as my critics on the activist left now allege, for
transgendered people en masse.
We Only Love You
if You Do What We Want
We rarely, if ever, hear of reversion stories these days.
I’m not at all surprised, given the online outpouring of hatred I received from
the activist community following my return to Will (a virtual counterpart to
the very real abuse I received from London’s immigrant population whilst
Sarah). Here’s a modest sampling of the vitriol I encountered after a piece I
wrote on my return to manhood was published by The Independent last December: (emphasis theirs)
Simply put the dresses away and enjoy some of that good ole male
privilege.
Only a tourist can afford to be bored with transgenderism
An attention seeking poser with zero understanding of the harm you’ve
done. Please go fuck yourself.
YOUR stunt gave RELIGIOUS BIGOTS ammunition jackass!
Apologize for your fuck-up, and NEVER SPEAK ON TRANS ISSUES EVER
A-FUCKING-GAIN asshole
I shudder to think what someone of Jenner’s fame would be
subjected to if she dared to express any doubts about her decision. As for
myself, I was compelled to remind a frothing, self-righteous lot of Twitter
trans-warriors that doctors in England require a patient to live for at least a
year as their chosen gender before any discussion of sexual reassignment
surgery takes place, leaving enough time for individuals to change their minds
if need be and opt out.
Simultaneously, I sought comfort by recalling the
backlash following John Lennon’s comments about the Beatles and Christianity.
For “Christianity,” read here the new fundamentalist religion of “Activism.”
Liberals hate it when people change their minds. Because,
again, what is consistent for the individual is often inconsistent for the body
politic. If a man chooses to live as a woman, he must never be a “he” again.
Otherwise, his experience must have been an attempt to infiltrate and undermine
the overarching LGBT agenda.
If one marches with Black Lives Matter, one must march on
to the bitter end, lest he be branded by the new slave traders of ideology as
an Uncle Tom, despite the calendar reading 2016 and not 1864. If a scrutinizing
individual takes a deeper look at Hamas and decides the Free Palestine movement
is no longer for them, that individual is not anti-terrorism, but rather in
alignment with a vast Zionist conspiracy to devour Arab children.
Don’t You Dare Get
in the Way of Our Narrative
By trade, I am a character comedian. I rattle out an
average of 40 to 50 voices in every show I perform. Offstage, as I’ve already
mentioned, I spent the year 2015 evenly divided between living as Will and
living as Sarah. Despite these considerations, I would nevertheless submit that
I possess an infinitely stronger sense of identity than a garden-variety
liberal activist.
Simply consider this revealing extract sent to me, again,
in the wake of The Independent
article: (emphasis theirs): “I’m angry at YOU for giving Bible thumpers ‘proof’
that Trans is a ‘choice’ you clueless fuckmaggot.”
Notwithstanding the fact that I never received any abuse
from Christians whilst living as Sarah and irrespective of such incidents as
being accosted by a group of young Muslim men exiting an Eid celebration in
Birmingham, there’s something even more erroneous and disconcerting revealed
about liberal orthodoxy in the above statement. Because they disdain
individuality in favor of blind collectivism, activist liberals are unable to
hear things in isolation.
When I wrote in the article that I had made a choice about my
life, this person and others of similar outlook had instead pluralized the
singular to hear me say “all trans
people have a choice about their
lives.” Begging the question, how fragile must their identities be to react
with such panic and anger? Unwittingly, I have become a threat to a prewritten
collective narrative. My choice to live again as a man implies there may be
others for whom the trans lifestyle is a choice.
Perhaps the fear and anger emanating from the activists
is twofold. On the personal level, there’s a fear among some in the trans
community who are likewise uncertain about their own decision and are reticent
to address the personal responsibility of choice that is part and parcel of
that uncertainty. On the political level, there’s a collective anger in
realizing it’s not going to be as easy to bully in legislation under the flimsy
pretext of “give us what we want ‘cause we don’t have a choice!” Especially if
loose cannons like myself keep making up their own minds about what do with
their own lives.
Choice is rebellion. Choice is rock-n-roll. Choice is, if
you will, The Beatles.
My decision may not be consistent with a liberal activist
agenda, but it’s consistent with me. And that’s why I now find myself cast as
the opposition. But I’m not bothered in the slightest. I’m quite used to being
the opposition. That’s because, regardless of how I dress and what name I use,
I am still one of the most oppressed minorities living in the West today.
I am an individual.
No comments:
Post a Comment