Wondering about the Trans Stampede

There is no reason to be rude or impolite to people who dress as and pretend to be members of the opposite sex, but there also is no more reason to accept their pretense as valid than for accepting someone’s statement that he is Napoleon. Yet at present there is a lot of social and sometimes governmental pressure from leftists to make people do it. It is interesting to think about why this is so.

There is not a question of injustice.  People have a right  to say, pretend, or believe anything they like about themselves, but no right to require anyone else to agree with them. If I claim to be a better basketball player than LeBron James, others do me no harm and commit no injustice in deciding I am wrong.  Neither on the surface does it appear to be about political opportunism. The number of transsexuals is vanishingly small as a percentage of the population. They are not likely to be significant either as donors or decisive swing voters.  

Still it is often useful in wondering about reasons for something to consider again who benefits from it and how.  Doing so with this  leads to  possible answers from George Orwell. If one is seeking  to maintain and increase one’s power in the name of false and indefensible beliefs, it is useful   to have a category of thought crimes, and it can be good  to make people say and even better to make them believe that two and two are five.  If one  can get people to accept a denial of  the obvious fact that throughout most of the animal kingdom and among all species of primates there are exactly two genetically determined sexes, it could become easier to gain similar acceptance for notions of a more pragmatic interest.