The Problems of Deception part 3
Some time ago, a woman-friend who worked in a nearby office-building told me that, the day before, she had taken a break from work and gone to the ladies' room on her floor. As she sat in her stall, a tall person entered the stall next to hers, wearing huge red high heels--that pointed toward the stall, rather than away from it. She was married and knew it had to be a guy. She asked around and learned that the cross-dresser wasn't even on the right floor. He wanted some government department to pay for his sex-change operation.
She kept very quiet. This occured sometime in the early 1980s, following the release of Brian De Palma's new giallo movie Dressed to Kill, starring Angie Dickinson and Michael Caine. In one particularly horrific scene, a woman enters an elevator, followed by a cross-dresser wearing a black, leather coat, black sun-glasses and a blond wig. He takes out a straight-razor and slashes the woman to death.
The whole movie carries that kind of shock. It takes Lady Caroline's Trojan-Horse ruse a step further, since it represents an intrusion into the personal space of other people, under false pretenses. Who can forget a scene like that? Everyone likes to think they are safe in public bathrooms and elevators.
If we remove the moralistic hoopla about the rights of trans-people and gays in general, the truth will emerge that we instinctively mistrust people who misrepresent themselves to others, who engage in this kind of deception. I suggest that they trying to argue their way out of it. We're talking about average, unsophisticated people who like things straightforward.
Rather than run to legislators or put pressure on the public, gays and trans people need to win the trust of the pedestrian public, because the truth about this situation is that the public is afraid. Seen in the light of the rape of boys by clergymen and the Dunblane massacre in Scotland, the public has enough justifiable fear about the intentions of gays and lesbians not to trust them, no matter how much lobbying they do. Bradley Manning did not go to prison for cross-dressing. He went for giving away the secrets of his country. He violated his oath to "serve" his country, not betray it, so he earned his prison time.
Basically, people have no problem with women who pretend to be men, or visa versa, Live and let live. Let people live the life they want--just find it in your own nation. What worries us is veiled intentions and blaming the nation for personal problems. Nationhood requires courage, character and leadership-orientation. In your own nation, no one has to pretend or obfuscate. The philosophy of the nation lets citizens live transparently. The gays need to find their paradise the way Salomon Perel did. Build a society on the ideal of transparency.
Left-wing people salute Manning for the courage to betray the US. They may not feel so generous if someone betrays their country. After all the hard work they went through to create it, the idea of a disgruntled crumb-bum selling them down the river will enrage them, exactly as Manning's actions enrage most Americans.
They need to abandon their posture of disaffection toward the US, and embrace pro-active nation-building. They can't excuse themselves, saying that they don't believe in nationhood, just as they don't believe in gender; but don't leftists value having real estate under their feet? How far do they want to take an extra-national stance, except as a ruse.