Another day, another hate crime. This one comes to us from Bolton and features a Tory councillor, Zoe Kirk-Robinson, who underwent gender reassignment a decade ago, getting very upset with a Labour councillor, Guy Harkin, who apparently kept referring to him/her as he rather than she in a recent meeting. So upset in fact, that he/she thought it worthy of complaining to the police. And they, having no streets to patrol or incidents to investigate in crime-free Bolton, are now looking into this as a potential hate crime (note: I use the term he/she throughout purely because although I am aware of councillor Kirk-Robinson’s biological sex, it seems somewhat bizarre to refer to a person who goes by the name of Zoe as a he).
Incidentally, I do love the fact that it was the Tory councillor who had the gender reassignment. The symbolism is too good to be missed, since a number of years ago that party underwent an ideology reassignment, a process that involved a quite painful surgical removal of all vestiges of conservatism in order to transform itself into the vast hulk of cultural Marxism we know it as today. I almost wonder that it doesn’t get offended when people still refer to it as conservative and report this as a hate crime, but then of course I realise that it must retain the name ‘Conservative’ for PR reasons, lest we all come to realise the ruse that is being performed on us.
Anyway, back to the case of hate in Bolton. Now you have to be watching carefully to see the sleight of hand going on here. Councillor Kirk-Robinson’s biological sex is male, right? This is objectively true, is it not? What I mean is that at some point in the past, the midwife present at his/her birth pronounced Councillor Kirk-Robinson to be a boy (well presumably he/she wasn’t a councillor back then, but with subjectivity I suppose anything is possible). We can assume that the midwife made her assessment (I presume it was a she) on the basis of objective data, rather than on a personal whim. Indeed, had she pronounced Councillor Kirk-Robinson to be a girl or non-gender specific, despite the clear evidence to the contrary, we can safely assume that Councillor Kirk-Robinson’s parents would have corrected her and, had she still insisted on ignoring the evidence, made a complaint.
But at some point after that, Councillor Kirk-Robinson came to believe that the objective data was wrong and so decided to undergo a process of surgical mutilation. Note, however, that the objective data was not wrong. How could it be? It is objective. It includes physically provable characteristics and XY chromosomes. Indeed, the very fact that surgical mutilation was subsequently involved rather proves the point. We can therefore safely say that Councillor Kirk-Robinson’s decision was an entirely subjective one.
Now, here’s where the sleight of hand comes in. Having taken a decision that was demonstrably subjective, Councillor Kirk-Robinson now asserts that he/she is objectively a woman. But even more than that, he/she expects everyone else now to accept this as objective reality. Indeed, anyone that will not do that is labelled a hater and possibly reported to the police.
Do you see what has happened? We start with a denial of objective reality. Then the one who has done the denying starts insisting that their subjective decision be treated objectively. And if we don’t bow to the new, artificially created reality, we get to have a label annexed to us: hater, transphobe, bigot. The words “cake,” “having your,” and “eat it” spring to mind!
Questions:
- If someone acts contrary to objective reality, what grounds do they then have for insisting that everyone else treat their subjective reality as objectively true?
- If someone chooses to make their identity a matter of subjectivity, what grounds do they have for saying that the rest of us cannot also make it a matter of subjectivity and call them him or her depending on how we “feel”?
In other words, having chosen to put subjectivity and feelings above objective reality, those who have done this then deny the same rights of subjectivity and feelings to others. If Councillor Harkin believes Councillor Kirk-Robinson to be a box of breakfast cereal, I can say he is wrong, on the basis that I put a strong attachment to objective reality, and I am confident that the objective data shows clearly that Councillor Kirk-Robinson is not a box of breakfast cereal but a human. But for Councillor Kirk-Robinson to deny Councillor Harkin that same right flies in the face of the logic he/she used in the first place to proclaim against his/her objective biological sex. Who knows, perhaps denying Councillor Harkin his subjective right to believe others to be boxes of breakfast cereal might even be a hate crime. Bransphobia.
I said that the words “cake,” “having your,” and “eat it” spring to mind, but actually it’s worse than that. The word “totalitarian” also springs to mind. For the very essence of totalitarianism is creating new, subjective realities, and then insisting that everyone else accept them or else. Unfortunately, it appears that this is where our embracing of alternative reality is leading us.
