(LifeSiteNews) — This past week, celebrities, politicians, and global leaders met in New York for the 2023 Clinton Global Initiative. Unsurprisingly, LGBT issues were at the top of the agenda. One panel discussion, hosted by NBA Hall of Famer Dwyane Wade, included writer and comedian Alok Vaid-Menon, who identifies as “gender non-conforming,” “transfeminine,” and (in case you’re not confused yet) uses “singular they third person pronouns,” and the New York-based transgender activist and designer Qween Jean.
Wade has become a prominent spokesperson on the LGBT scene since he announced that his son identifies as a “girl” and has talked about his “transgender daughter” in many media interviews. It bears mentioning that his ex-wife fought Wade’s decision to legally file to have his son’s name changed to “Zaya.” Wade is now married to the actress Gabrielle Union, but his ex-wife recently sued him because she is “concerned that our child is being commercialized at a young age” and that Wade is encouraging “gender transition” for financial reasons.
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The panel was an illuminating and disturbing glimpse into the mindset of America’s trans activists. According to Alok, “trans and gender non-conforming people” are “being attacked and scapegoated so heavily right now” specifically because the rest of society is jealous. “They keep telling us lies to distract from truths about themselves,” he said. “This actually has nothing to do with us.” Why, he asked, “should the straight and cisgender [sic] community care?”
Alok went on to answer his own question. Apparently, it is because gender-confused people have “the audacity to be free, to actually live the lives that they thought and still think are impossible, lives that are curated and cultivated around joy and possibility and expansion, they perceive us as a threat and not an invitation and not an invitation to another way to be. So what’s necessary going forward is to move the onus from my body to their psyche.” In short, he says, people oppose the trans movement due to an unwillingness to do the “shadow work” of “self-acceptance” and “because of our power.”
To which one can only respond: Nah. We just want you to stop transing the kids, showing them pornography in schools, and confusing minors.
Qween Jean really got to the heart of the matter when Wade asked him how people could be “allies.” To begin with, Jean said, we need to stop “misgendering.” “A pronoun truly costs you nothing,” he noted to applause. And here is the crux of the issue: This isn’t about their right to seem themselves however they like – it is about our right not to participate in their constructed narratives. A pronoun may, in fact, cost you something very, very important: the truth. To knowingly lie – to call a big black man a woman, for example – is to compromise your own integrity. That is what the trans movement is asking of us.
Another fascinating aspect of the discussion was the persecution complex. Two transgender-identifying men are sitting on a stage talking to a celebrity at a conference run by the Clintons and packed with elites – and yet they insisted that they were the victims of an ongoing genocide. According to Alok, gender-confused people are facing an “impending fascism” that is “templating itself on us” but that, ultimately, we will all be at risk. The elites applauded. Some genocide. Imagine thinking that you’re the victims of fascism because some parents don’t want you to indoctrinate their kids.
At this, Qween chimed in to say that when you are “unapologetically genderless,” “there is a world of people who will not receive it in an affirming way.” That, once again, is the point – it is not that Qween cannot see himself however he wants. It is how we receive it – and whether we affirm it – that really matters. Indeed, he told his pastor father, from whom it seems he is estranged, that he didn’t care about “Leviticus but about love” and that his father didn’t love God, because otherwise “you would see the god in me.” This isn’t about courtesy or love. This is about truth and about worldview. Multiple times, the three panelists talked about transforming society. Despite a lot of garbling about compassion, it was very clear that their society involved compelled speech, compulsory LGBT “education” – and the sort of “affirmation” that involves the mandatory participation of the rest of us.
