Transidentity: when elites privatize reality

Transidentity: when elites privatize reality

Perhaps tomorrow, our elites will perceive a world where images, texts, and videos will be superimposed on top of reality. Street names would be "corrected" by their virtual helmet to transport them to another world, and the Pokémon GO game, which was content to project fictional creatures onto their environment, will seem very timid in comparison. We could even imagine that above the helmeted heads of other users that we would have the misfortune to meet in our streets, a small icon would appear to indicate the "gender" they would want to be at that moment, with the possibility of inventing new ones, of "customizing" themselves even more. Others will have access to a "diminished", raw reality, which once - but will they remember it? - belonged to everyone. 

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Transidentity: when elites privatize reality

Any reluctance towards the trans movement is crushed by this simple question: "But you , what do you lose out on?"

First, a community that closes off societal debates in this way, rather than with a convincing answer to the question, "And what could we gain from this?", has abdicated any claim to communal life in favor of individual comfort. Second, without even mentioning the possibility of feeling a duty to prevent young people from self-harming for life, even phrased this way , the question doesn't have to be rhetorical: I, personally, stand to lose several things (and so do you).

The most basic conceptual categories, from an evolutionary point of view, are "man", "woman", and "child" (the latter being our only, and temporary, representation of an asexual neuter). Our minds, whether we like it or not, pre-reflexively classify everyone into these three categories. Those who "transition", well aware of this unshakeable "prejudice" (which they attribute to culture and not to nature), do everything they can to jump from one category to another: women go so far as to remove their breasts, men sometimes settle for having their chin bone filed down... However, these drastic measures, even coupled with a good dose of makeup, are often insufficient to fool the human brain and its capacity for classification.

Jean Jaurès is often (wrongly) credited with the following statement: "To him who has nothing, his homeland is his only possession." In other words, those who have no personal heritage still have access to the common heritage: a common language, a flag, a history, solidarity, a story. It is not good to be not only poor but also stateless. The privatization of common spaces (parks that become paid for, for example) punishes first the least well-off among us. In the same way, the disappearance of social ties hits the precarious much harder. 

The rise of the trans movement could therefore be interpreted as a transfer of knowledge from the people to the elites.

But here we see this movement of restriction of the free and the common take a new step, by privatizing reality itself. The poorest are now being deprived of the very capacity to recognize and identify men and women. These cognitive categories no longer belong to the people; it will now be necessary to ask those who know, experts in themselves, whether they feel like a man or a woman (or Other) at the moment the conversation takes place. Already ordered to no longer "see what they see" (Péguy) with the domination of political correctness, "ordinary people" will have to ask permission before being able to say to their children "look at the pretty lady over there!", "misgendering" being increasingly punishable by social death. The Foucauldians, who usually jump at every opportunity to denounce "power and its power to name, to classify", remain strangely silent here on this obvious lexical dispossession.

The rise of the trans movement could therefore be interpreted as a transfer of knowledge from the people to the elites. As the essayist Claude Habib notes in La Question Trans , "the human species is composed of two sexes: how is it that such a commonplace, reasonable, and widely shared position could have been excluded from the debate? How can we explain that the majority was deprived, without any struggle, of the right to express its thoughts?"

The same thing has happened with art: in its "contemporary" form, a guide and/or a lengthy explanatory panel are required to begin to "appreciate" a work, whereas to admire a cathedral, one simply needs eyes; an entrance ticket isn't always necessary. Just as art has gone from being "for everyone" to being "for elites," fundamental conceptual categories that once belonged to all now belong to a select few . And in both cases, a class-based contempt often arises for those who resist, for the backward individuals who supposedly "didn't understand the transgression of the gesture."

To the extent that the difference between the sexes is denied, and that a "sense of self" remains too subjective to convince in the public space, woke ideology is once again obliged to resurrect the same external signs that it denounces in order to defend the authenticity of the desire for transition.

This epistemological transfer is the fruit of a paradoxical individualism: if it is one thing to believe oneself to be self-generated, it is another to ask the community to endorse this new identity, even if the latter is itself fluctuating and incomprehensible. Woke ideology denies the importance of the community at first (the individual must be able to escape all social roles to define himself as he wants) before insisting on the importance of the latter in a second time (everyone must imperatively call and treat the individual in the way he wants to perfect his "social" transition).

In the same way, trans people, quick to denounce “gender stereotypes,” find themselves obliged to consecrate them in order to brandish external proof of the truth of their transgressive feelings. The “proof” that a man who “feels like a woman” is right deep down would be that he wears clothes that give him a feminine appearance. The implacable demonstration that a young woman is in reality a young man would be that she loves to wear short hair and practice combat sports: in short, to conform to stereotypes. To the extent that the difference between the sexes is denied, and that a “feeling of self” remains too subjective to convince in the public space, woke ideology is once again obliged to resurrect the same external signs that it denounces in order to defend the authenticity of the desire for transition.

Thus, even Wokism knows that we don't behave the same way when interacting with a woman as with a man. We all implicitly use certain rules, certain different etiquettes depending on the context. The advantage of these, these stereotypes , is that everyone is more or less familiar with them, which facilitates social interactions. But who knows if we should hold the door for a " genderfluid " person? How should we behave politely with a "non-binary" person? There are no rules for interacting with a "xenogender," nor sometimes even a good definition of the term. When a ship sinks, what will the new chivalry demand? " Two-spirit " people and "asexuals" first?

This is a speech that the left, even the so-called "social" one, has never been able to deliver for the cause of the "proletariat". The most terrible of all privatizations has been passed over in silence in its ranks.

Let us wager that the total absence of common norms, heralded as paradise, will only lead to the reign of mass isolation. As the historian Christopher Lasch already predicted in *The Revolt of the Elites* (1994), "the suspension of ethical judgment logically condemns us to solitude." Those who constantly invoke the word "tolerance" fail to realize that they will only bring about the most brutal form of collective indifference.

Because how can we imagine that a common, any social bond could survive after such a privatization? This is a discourse that the left, even the so-called "social" one, has never been able to hold for the cause of the "proletariat". The most terrible of all privatizations has been passed over in silence in its ranks. Let us note that it is also less and less capable of writing the term "workers" without mutilating it, fragmenting it, dividing it, by speaking of "workers".

In line with this paradoxical individualism are the projects of "augmented reality," the beginnings of which we are already seeing around us. Tomorrow, perhaps, our elites will perceive a world where images, texts, and videos are superimposed on reality. Street names will be "corrected" by their virtual reality headsets, transporting them to another universe, and the Pokémon GO game , which merely projected fictional creatures onto their surroundings, will seem quite tame in comparison. We could even imagine that above the headseted heads of other users we might have the misfortune to encounter on our streets, a small icon will appear to indicate the "gender" they wish to be at that moment, with the possibility of inventing new ones, of " customizing " themselves even further. Others will have access to a "diminished," raw reality, which once—but will they remember?—belonged to everyone.

Let them rest assured, for the modest sum of €9,99 per month, even the people will certainly be able to join this world, this "community", where everyone will live, alone.

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