The worst sexual abuse of children in all history is happening right now. Very young children, full of the normal doubts and anxieties about their bodies and personas, are being groomed by adults to believe they have been born into the wrong sex and must now take steps through drugs and surgery to change from boy to girl or from girl to boy.
This is an abomination, the worst kind of child abuse. Making it even worse is that the perpetrators of this evil nonsense parade themselves as virtuous, and condemn those who say they should leave children alone; they condemn those who say we should comfort children and reassure them, rather than molesting them and trying to make them depressed and fearful.
Humans are very strange animals, and their sexual behaviour is most peculiar and uncertain. I cannot help comparing them with my favourite animal, the cat. I love cats but try to be honest about them. The sexual behaviour of the tomcat is utterly reprehensible. His mating is brief, brutal, totally unromantic and utterly irresponsible. But at least his sexual behaviour is clear and without ambiguity. Human sexual behaviour is hopelessly confused and full of ambiguity. The history of human sexuality may be divided into two parts: the sexual feelings and behaviour of individuals, and the response by the authorities of governments, religions and social workers.
(I repeat that I regard “sex” as a biological term, and “gender” as a grammatical term. There are four genders, masculine, feminine, common and neuter, and two sexes, defined by the XX and XY chromosomes. Of course, within each sex is a large variety of femininity and masculinity.)
Any examination of sexual behaviour at any time in history shows that human sexuality hardly varies down the ages. If you look to Ancient Rome or Greece, for example, you see exactly the same scandals, lusts, betrayals, jealous rages, murders and depravity as you see today. Julius Caesar, the greatest soldier of all time (and a murderous tyrant with it), laid the foundations of the Roman Empire that followed him, and thus the foundations of Western civilisation. He probably would never have achieved full power without the help of Publius Clodius, a depraved thug who controlled the Roman mob and who disguised himself as a woman to enter among the Vestal Virgins in a religious rite with the aim of seducing some powerful woman (or perhaps with other purposes). Rome seethed with sexual scandals, real or imagined, about each Emperor and his family. Ancient Athens seems much the same. The reaction of the people seems exactly the same as today, a combination of prurient interest and ribald laughter – and often feigned disapproval, which never stopped the disapproving ones eagerly seeking the next scandal. The sexual history of the human race seems like an extended version of the Jerry Springer Show.
What does change is the response of authority. Religious authorities down the ages had a clear picture of human behaviour, especially sexual behaviour, which obsesses many religions, with some noticeable exceptions. The religious scribes were wise in their observations but not in their recommendations. The Old Testament, for example, is full of sexual indiscretions and ferocious injunctions against them. It seemed to understand clearly the sexual doubts and anxieties of the young. Deuteronomy 23:1 says this: “He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD.” My father, who had not the slightest interest in any religion but had had the Old Bible drummed into him in his Glasgow childhood, explained this to me. Religious adolescent males in ancient times were at once tormented with sexual desires and the fear that God would punish them if they gave way to them. Some tried to castrate themselves to escape their torment, and the religious leaders were warning them not to do so.
Interestingly enough, the Jesus of the four gospels – surely the bedrock of Christianity – shows almost no interest in sex. It was obviously of no importance to him. He never gives sexual prescriptions or chastises sexual naughtiness. Quite the opposite: he embraces a prostitute and gives what is surely the most tolerant suggestion in all history when he says to those about to execute an adulteress: “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”
Differing attitudes toward homosexuality are the most obvious example of the inconsistency of authorities towards sex. For most ages and in most countries, nobody cared about homosexuality one way or the other. Everybody just accepted it, without comment and without interest. Some people are sexually attracted to their own sex. So what? That’s just nature. It seems clear that Alexander the Great, like many great soldiers of the time, slept with young boys as well as women. The Hollywood film, “Spartacus”, had Laurence Olivier’s character hinting at this rather lewdly, and Arthur Koestler’s far more ‘historical’ book of Spartacus (“The Gladiators”) just noting it in a blunt and factual way. The fact that the ancients never had a word for homosexuality shows how little they cared. (This does not mean they were tolerant in general. They persecuted another minority of people, to whom my mother belonged, and gave them an ugly name, “sinistra”. My mother was left-handed. Left-handed children in England in the 1920’s would be beaten if teachers caught them writing with their left hands. They might have their left hands tied behind their backs.) “Homosexual” is a contrived and clumsy word coined in the 19th Century but I prefer it to “gay”, which seems to me offensive and insulting.
After centuries of tolerant indifference to homosexuality, England in about the 18th Century, I suppose, started getting sanctimonious and shocked about it. I don’t know why. Christianity is sometimes blamed but, as I say, Jesus never said anything about it (although Paul did). There were horrible persecutions, such as of Oscar Wilde and, much worse, Alan Turing, the gentle mathematical genius who cracked the German codes in WW2 and so saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
In 1959, the rich white bourgeois revolutionary, Fidel Castro, seized power in Cuba, turned it into a Communist dictatorship and immediately started persecuting homosexuals and others of the LBGT community – and men who looked “effeminate”. They were maricones, a disgusting product of capitalist decadence. Hitler’s attitude towards homosexuality was entirely expedient, whatever suited his political aims. He himself was sexless. The wife of a senior Nazi, after meeting Hitler for the first time, said to her husband, “I tell you, he is a neuter.” But all around him was every type of sexual deviancy you can imagine. The man who brought him to power was Ernst Roehm, a thuggish German officer who formed and controlled the brutal Sturmabteilung (SA), a private army faithful to Hitler, which caused havoc on the streets of Germany, beating up and killing all opposition to the Nazis. Roehm was not only openly homosexual but flaunted it, and like Alexander in the past, was proud of sleeping with pretty young men. Hitler knew all about it and ignored it. But when Hitler came to power, he decided to disband the SA, which had become an embarrassment, and in May 1934 ordered Roehm and a group around him to be killed. Hitler cited Roehm’s homosexuality as a reason; Goebbels said it was “moral turpitude”. So much for some of the horrible people who want to persecute people for sexual differences. What about the horrible people who want to torment children into becoming different?
Children are almost infinitely plastic and mouldable. A one-year-old child can be taught any language in a few years – and acquire a perfect accent in it, something quite beyond the ability of almost all adults; she or he can acquire any religion or any set of beliefs. Children are also almost infinitely suggestible. A skilful adult can persuade a child to remember things that had never happened. In a court room, any skilful lawyer can make a child believe in any version of the case in hand. A skilful adult can also make the most healthy, vigorous, confident child feel sick, inadequate and depressed. A skilful adult can also persuade any young child that she or he is born in the wrong body, and must worry night and day about it, and must start taking drugs to prepare for an operation to chop off testicles, penises or breasts to effect the change.
Puberty is an awful time for children. Unless they have received clear instruction in what is going to happen to them, which up to now seldom happens, they will be bewildered and upset about the changes in their bodies and their minds. Usually they will feel guilty or even dirty. Little boys will be racked by sexual desire, all the more if religious leaders say that it is sinful. Little girls will be ashamed and horrified about their first periods. They will all be filled with doubts about their own abilities to function successfully as sexual adults. They will be scared that they are unattractive to the opposite sex. Some might have doubts about their sexual preferences, sometimes because they are born homosexual, sometimes because they are just anxious. Feelings of inadequacy about their sporting prowess or their academic abilities or, most of all about their popularity – since the approval of their peers is the most urgent need in children – might easily lead to sexual doubts and fears. All of this is perfectly natural and normal. All of this can be dealt with sensibly and sympathetically.
Children should be taught the facts of life at school – but without fuss. The instruction should be scientific not moralistic. Girls should be taught about their periods, and about sexual intercourse and conception, and told that they are sexually attractive to boys. Boys should be taught about sexual intercourse and the reasons for their sexual desires, and they should also be taught that girls do not have the same sexual desires as boys have. It should be explained that sexual anxiety is normal. They should be told that most of it will gradually fall away. If they worry about their sexual identity, they should be told that it is normal to worry. ‘Just try to live with it calmly and ask adults for advice and assurance. If, when you become a mature adult, you are still sure you are in the wrong body, then proceed with the sex change. But not as a child.’
But instead of sensible, sympathetic counselling for children with sexual doubts, there is now a demented and evil attempt by some sick adults to torture children, sometimes very young children, into believing they have the wrong bodies and must have their bodies changed, and damaged forever, by chemicals and surgery. As far as I know, this is unique in history. The closest thing I know to it is female circumcision, practised in parts of Northeast Africa and the Middle East. Here a healthy ten-year-old girl is suddenly and without warning seized by older women (always women, never men), stripped naked, held down with her little legs apart, and has her clitoris and large parts of her vulva cut off with a razor blade (often rusty), while she bleeds and screams in agony and terror. She will never feel sexual pleasure in all her life, which seems to be the main, indeed the only purpose of the operation. It is the most extreme act in pursuit of male sexual jealousy, an over-riding obsession in most religions. (This horrible practice claims to be Islamic but as far as I know there is no mention of it in the Koran.) But the little girl, so mutilated, will be able to have children, something a little girl in the West will not be able to do if drugs and surgery have removed enough female function in the attempt to turn her into a boy.
There is a new jargon about sex change. The feeling that you are born into a body of the wrong sex is known as “gender dysphoria”. Procedures to change sex are “gender-affirming”. People who have had their sex changed and now regret it are “detransitioners”. There seem to be three stages of turning a boy into a girl or a girl into a boy. They can begin before the child is ten years old. The first stage is with drugs called “puberty-blockers”, which inhibit sexual development. The second is with drugs called “cross-sex hormones”, which inhibit or encourage testosterone, and which will help boys get breasts and girls to get deep voices, facial hair and thicker bones. Finally, there is surgery, where male and female body parts are cut off and artificial penises and vaginas are made by surgeons. The second stage is mainly irreversible, the third stage entirely.
All school children are aware that some other children are different. At my school in Cape Town, somewhat down the social ladder, the little boys, becoming more and more interested in the little girls, noticed more and more differences in them. For example, boys soon notice that most girls cannot throw balls or stones. They just cannot produce the necessary whipping action. But at our school a certain girl, M, could. She could not only throw a ball as well as a boy but further and more accurately than most of us. She could also kick a rugby ball higher. Everyone noticed that but without particular interest. She was just like that. So what? A more extreme example is Caster Semenya. This most fortunate/unfortunate girl was born with strong masculine features, such as high testosterone levels and heavy muscles; she was missing certain female parts. In athletics, especially the 800 metres, she became world champion. She caused a stir, particularly among feminine-looking woman athletes whom she beat. The world athletic bodies recognise only two sexes, male and female. That’s all. There were demands that she should be sexually classified. She was. She was examined by medical experts and pronounced female. That was that. Or rather, that should have been that. But instead, the athletic authorities insisted she took drugs to reduce her testosterone levels, which they said gave her an unfair advantage. This is utterly disgusting, quite shameful. Every sporting champion is born with some unfair advantages. Caster is a woman; you said so. So let her compete in all women’s events as she pleases. It’s quite a different matter having a man, with complete male parts but suddenly feeling that he is a she, competing in woman’s events, without any medical examination of his or her sex.
The mania over “gender dysphoria” seems to have come from the USA, like so many good and bad things. But now, I am happy to say, more than ten states, all of them Republican, have outlawed drugs and surgery to change sex in children. They feel that people must become adults before they can decide. Naturally they have been denounced by – actually whom have they been denounced by? Some feminists have strongly condemned men pretending to be women, so it cannot be from them. I suppose these Republicans have been denounced in a vague sort of way by the white ruling class elites as “right-wing”, which means anything you want it to mean.
The supreme example of an adult, after very long, careful and sometimes agonised thought, deciding to change sex is Jan Morris, formerly James Morris. After a very successful career as a travel and history writer, writing wonderful books about the British Empire, she had the sex-change operation at the age of 46, and wrote a most moving book, “Conundrum”, about it. I urge you to read it if you haven’t. Contrast her calm seriousness, and the fact that she was completely in charge of her own actions, with the evil silliness of those who want to force bewildered children to take the knife once and forever to their sexual being.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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