The transgender crisis in Britain
In the last few days a news item appeared in the ‘UK’ of how girls wishing to change gender are going to be tested for autism. This is an interesting one for several reasons and of course is only relevant at all because of the strange obsession with sex and gender which has taken hold in the last decade or so, and of course with the possibility of actually being able to go through a medical change. This post is not about what is a biological woman, and which has also been in the news recently, causing hours of debate. Logically that subject is as it always has been, and where the ancient Greeks had such a very sensible view that there was male and there was female, and then there were some males who were a bit more female and there were some females who were a bit more male, and such has ever been the human population all over Earth. Happily for the ancient Greeks, men-men had their place, men-women had their place in the household, and for the real women-women well, there was Lesbos just over the water.
This comment is about the link made between girls wishing to change gender and that a test for autism could be made. Apparently statistics show a higher percentage of those wishing to change gender are autistic than the average, so there is a correlation. Why would this be? A few decades ago when a tiny number of people did change gender, to now when it has almost become those not questioning their gender have to apologise for being just as they are, where do sex/gender and autism stand? And why autistic girls, and not autistic boys? Why do autistic girls want to become boys but not so many autistic boys want to become girls?
Because this blog is measured entirely from the logical point of view, where does logic sit in this matter? A logical approach would be to cross reference back over recent history, because as the medical facility to change gender has been a bit of a boom industry in the 2000s it is very easy to compare back to say, the 1960s, 1970s or 1980s when these sort of societal questions were just not in the public parlance. What is missing in this question of autistic girls and changing gender?
Well, logically, society itself is missing in this debate in Britain. The public realm in which young and old live, males and females, and all the variations, never gets a look in now. The inversion of the public sphere – meaning a measurable public area – used to have an identity even if not actually living like a biological being, it still did have an identity to which the human related and engaged. Now in the strange psychological inversions that have taken place, probably largely from the digital screens which invert and invert again, those born in the 1990s, almost it seems into a digital screen, have no knowledge of society as an entity only a few decades back. In that society were groups of young people like the Famous Five, with George, real name Georgina, who wore her hair short, wanted to be called a boy’s name, and could stand as one of society’s greatest icons to the tomboy. What a great position to hold. If the balance of hormones puts a girl into a more masculine category and society allows the freedom to cut the hair, use a boy’s name, and not have to worry about the feminine complications in life then what better a life could there be?
If ‘the tomboy’ was restored to its previous natural place, and autistic girls who felt uncomfortable in the present day female realm did not have to consider medically changing sex, with the proviso that you can’t actually change into the other sex, would that be a logical solution to this massive problem? In the distorted world of digital images and the selfie and the limitless supply of cheap clothes, make up, strange looking nails from a nail bar, hair extensions and large eye lashes, it is not really a surprise that autistic girls do not wish to identify with such things. If a specific category of ‘tomboy’ was restored, even with a box on forms to tick, how much confusion would reduce just from that? Possibly quite a lot.
But if the societal identity was further asked, where does Britain stand on all humans measuring their identity to the public place? Nowadays the words space and place are used interchangeably, but on the Earth’s surface a space has to be a place. If instead of young people being encouraged to define themselves by anything but the public realm, this was turned on its head and the public realm was the definition, how could that be useful in lessening individual identity confusion? Hannah Arendt talked about the three realms of the public, the private, and then the social sphere, Walking around most British towns these days it isn’t possible to see any definition at all is it. What if the ‘UK’ government made a law to say that in the public realm, in which biological people look at each other, everyone regardless of sex should be covered by clothes from collar bone to elbow, and down to the knee. How would that change the sexual identity confusion going on today? Probably it would be a great relief for the autistic girls who grow up amongst females putting out sexual availability, obsessed by every like on their screens, obsessed by who is looking at them, by who said what to who and where, while autistic girls spend their time on more useful things and in more useful pursuits yet with no societal place now, only with the guys, the non transitioned guys that is. If there was both a law passed to take this overt sexual availability out of public places, and transport, and in the way females dress in organisations and conferences and out jogging, along with an official restoration of the place of the tomboy in society, how would that change the statistics of autistic girls wishing to change gender? Probably it would change it a lot.
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