April 6, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — It was only a matter of time before the media began to explain to us that the coronavirus pandemic has been especially difficult for transgender and non-binary people and that as such, we should be paying special attention to gender ideology during this difficult time. After all, trans issues have plunged from the forefront of our politics to a virtual non-issue in the time it took for the virus to cripple Europe and reach North America, which is to say not very long.
Trans activists have spent the last five years accusing those who believe that there are two sexes of “erasing the existence” of non-binary people, and now they have to watch as health organizations and governments record the cases of coronavirus in the male and female populations while the dozens of other mythical genders get ignored. It’s almost as if trans activists are being brushed off the way a usually doting parent might silence a whining child: Hush now, we have no time for that at the moment. Maybe later.
It is fascinating that during a time of genuine emergency, many people just drop the act almost by default. It’s almost as if gender ideology is a luxury that gave the elites something to virtue-signal about before we had real problems. Feminist Twitter is having a good time illustrating the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the fact that those who enable the gender ideologues do not actually believe what they say they believe — at least, not when the chips are down. Headlines are being contrasted to highlight this. On October 25, 2018, for example, the New York Times ran a column titled “Why Sex Is Not Binary.” On April 2, 2020, the paper ran a column titled “Why Are So Many More Men Dying of Coronavirus?” The implication was obvious: why are more men than women dying of coronavirus? Nobody has time to pretend that sex isn’t binary — not right now. We can’t afford to.
Trans activists are already angry that the pandemic has forced hospitals to declare their genital-altering surgeries “non-essential,” as this is a rebuttal to everything they’ve been saying for a decade. In a stunningly short amount of time, LGBT activists had governments, health organizations, and cultural figures agreeing with them that puberty-blockers and mastectomies, castrations, and other mutilating surgeries are essential. If we do not offer these so-called services promptly, we were told, people will die. But again, when we are faced with a genuine medical emergency, health care officials are forced to admit what we all already knew: that these surgeries are not essential. They are non-essential. These delays are certainly temporary, but the reason trans activists are angry about them is that the fundamental premises of their argument have just been terfed. Er, turfed.
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BuzzFeed News is trying to keep trans issues front and center, but even its article, titled “How trans and nonbinary people are coping right now,” could not help but sound pathetic and ridiculous:
Some others have found that their basic day-to-day needs, such as chest binding, are harder if not impossible to perform right now, because they could exacerbate some of the respiratory issues characteristic of COVID-19. “I finally, for the first time ever, got a binder that actually fits me. I was so excited when it finally arrived. So excited to look like me, and feel like me,” wrote KC Lylark, a 22-year-old based in London. “I was very self-conscious about my breathing because I didn't want anyone to think I had symptoms … even though my binder makes me feel more euphoric than ever before, I know I shouldn't have it on much at all until this blows over.”
Chest-binders, in case you haven’t heard of them, are essentially wraps used by girls who believe they are boys to flatten their breasts and “pass” as male. They are also quite dangerous at the best of times, and the risks of using them include broken ribs and collapsed lungs. The fact that the media have been promoting them as essential health care for those struggling with gender dysphoria is criminally negligent.
I’m not even sure what BuzzFeed is trying to say here, and although I’ve heard a lot of weird new words lately, I’ve never seen “folx” before — I presume it means folks:
Even though the country is currently in crisis mode, many trans people have already been living in dire circumstances. There was widespread concern after Trump’s election that, among many other things, hormones would become unavailable. Some trans folx began sharing prescriptions, which is technically illegal and not sanctioned by medical professionals. “I know a lot of other trans women [that is, men —ed.] who have gone years and years without seeing a medical provider but have been taking hormones,” Dee Wollstonecraft Michel, a transgender services coordinator at St. James Infirmary in San Francisco, told Vice in 2017, already pointing to the way individuals can’t always turn to institutions for support.
The fact is that people struggling with gender dysphoria need genuine help, not an elaborate game of make-believe where the culture plays along with the idea that there are dozens of different genders and that poisoning and mutilating healthy bodies is the answer to struggles surrounding gender identity. During times of peace and prosperity, our decadent society will happily countenance virtually everything that the LGBT movement demands. During a genuine crisis, we discover that even our governments and our health care providers, as woke as they might be, have to admit that not all “crises” are equal — and that many of the premises of the trans movement are nonsense. They won’t say that out loud, but actions speak louder than words.
Jonathon’s new podcast, The Van Maren Show, is dedicated to telling the stories of the pro-life and pro-family movement. In his latest episode, he speaks with Ellen Fantini, the executive director of the Observatory on the Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe. They discuss the religious persecution Christians in Europe are facing as well as how their suffering is largely ignored by Western media outlets.
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