Gay writer Daniel Harris says, “The whole phenomenon of switching one’s gender is a mass delusion.”
And he goes much further than that:
Genetic women often sacrifice themselves to unrealistic standards of beauty, of thinness, of eternal youth, of huge bosoms and tiny, pinched waists. TGs likewise sacrifice themselves to outmoded standards of femininity, attempting to achieve an hourglass figure with gigantic breast implants that cantilever out from their chests like traffic cones and injections to their hips and butt of silicone—or, for the down‑and‑out, superglue, Fix‑a‑Flat, Slime Tube Sealant, and cotton balls.
Harris’ polemic — titled The Sacred Androgen — appeared in the most unlikely place, the prestigious Antioch Review, the oldest continuously published literary review in the country.
As a gay man who used to troll in drag for straight sex partners, Harris has sympathy for the transgendered but bemoans how transsexuals have “ambushed the debate and entangled us in a snare of such trivialities as the proper pronouns with which to address them, protocol as Byzantine and patronizing as the etiquette for addressing royalty.”
He is insulted by the “pejorative term ‘cisgender,’ which they use to describe those of us who accept, however unenthusiastically, our birth gender, as opposed to the enlightened few who question their sex.”
Harris is especially incensed at the surgical and hormonal lengths trannies go to mask their true sex and to portray themselves as extreme examples of female appearance. “TGs do not model themselves on the average hipless, braless, triple-A-cup coed in jeans and T-shirts, but on such vacuous female fantasies as Kim Kardashian, Pamela Anderson, and the English singer and fashion model Katie Price,” he says.
Harris also objects to the current trend among parents who may recognize effeminacy in their sons and then push them to change their apparent sex. He calls it a form of “homophobia”:
More and more, parents are encouraging their sons and daughters to transition when they spot even the slightest hint of effeminacy or boyishness on the grounds that such behaviors indicate desires to be the opposite sex when in fact their desire to play with dolls and throw footballs may reflect the desire to be something less exotic, even banal, namely gay.
He says, “The message of the 1960s and 1970 was androgyny, and yet the TG regresses to an age before androgyny. A culture that recognizes only two possibilities of sexual response, either Adam’s or Eve’s, an ultimatum to reconfigure her entire physiology in accordance with blunt, indiscriminate nomenclature that dulls our understanding of gender.”
That phrase — “only two possibilities of sexual response, either Adam’s or Eve’s” — is also described as “the gender binary” by progressives who wish to blur the long-standing legal, cultural, and stylistic distinctions between the legally equal two sexes of male and female. That political goal of “gender fluidity” is driving much of the federal effort to force states and schools to convert all single-sex public restrooms and locker rooms into mixed-sex facilities.
That’s the policy that Harris seems to prefer as he argues for pubic acceptance of greater sexual diversity. “Only a sexually puritanical society would condemn people seeking their own unique form of erotic fulfillment … the cost of conformity to [conventional images of male and female] the individual is decimating, but this is a price that many, both homosexuals and TGs, are willing to pay.”
Harris’s screed has not gone unnoticed. The ever-so-predicable backlash from “2800+ Writers, Editors, and Librarians Denounce Transphobia in the Antioch Review.” The group is especially steamed that Harris refers to transsexuals as “TGs” or “the TG” and that Harris writes about “TGs” swimming in “surgeon infested seas” and much else.
They complain, “As writers, editors, and librarians in the literary community we denounce the Antioch Review’s decisions not only to publish this piece, but subsequently to tout it on social media as “not-to-miss,” “sure to entertain, intrigue, and provoke,” and an opportunity “to take our debate to a new level on the topic of transgenders” [sic], and we ask for accountability from the editors for this decision.”
Harris is fairly well known gay writer who wrote a book about turning 46 and having to face the fact that gay culture worships youth. He discovered the subculture of gay drag queens who troll certain websites picking up straight men with the he/she proclivity. He ended up writing a book about it — Diary of a Drag Queen — that got good reviews, including in the New York Times, which said, “When Harris became a drag queen at 46, he got an unobstructed view of that world. (He was, after all, 6-foot-7 in stilettos.) More thoughtful than campy, Harris rendered his raw (to put it mildly) material into the enlightening and funny vignettes of “Diary of a Drag Queen.”
For its part, Antioch College is apologizing for giving offense but nonetheless standing by the editorial decision to run Harris’s piece:
It has come to our attention that an article published in the Winter 2016 issue of the Antioch Review is stirring debate in our campus and alumni communities and within the broader transgender community. Daniel Harris’ views are his own and, based on the response of some readers, are deeply offensive to many transgender individuals and supporters. Antioch College does not condone or always agree with the ideas and viewpoints expressed in the Review. We do, however, have confidence in the Review’s editor and editorial process, and support a key Antiochian value—the free expression of ideas and opinions, even when they run counter to our own. As a college, we encourage our students, faculty, and the broader community to engage in critical thought and dialogue around important issues, including this one. We believe commitments to the ideals of free expression and support for LGBTQ human and civil rights are not incompatible.
As the transgender ideology continues to temporarily color the national debate over sexuality, such pushback from regular homosexuals and lesbians will likely grow.
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