If Einar is a Danish girl then I’m a Dutchman
BY DANIEL MOODY
Lili Elbe, 1926, born Einar Wegener (right)
I have in recent years developed tenderness towards a particular kind of man. The kind who thinks he is a woman.
Primarily, this tenderness comes from recognising transsexualism to be a severe disorder, best thought of as a life-threatening condition. But as well as this I am just grateful that I know where I stand with a transsexual man: he thinks he is a person of the other sex. And that’s it, a nice neat binary.
But transsexualism is now host to a powerful parasite born of the legal ideology named Gender. Your ‘gender identity’ is neither the sex you are nor the sex you think you are. Rather, it is the gender you think you are. So whereas transsexualism is a state of mind regarding a state of body/sex, transgenderism is a state of mind regarding a state of mind/gender. And in being free from sex, gender is free from the neat binary (hence the unleashing of technicolour possibilities such as ‘genderqueer’ identities and ‘gender fluidity’).
At the heart of The Danish Girl, released in UK cinemas this week, lies a conflation of trans (sexual) and trans (gender). I for one will not be queuing for popcorn - I watched the trailer and was almost overcome by the noxious propaganda fumes emitted. What we have here is an exercise in wholesale gaslighting, a technique by which the insane drive the sane insane. This Oscar-bound vehicle for social engineering, replete with wall-to-wall advertising, stars Eddie Redmayne as a kind of pornographic Pied Piper, tasked with tempting our mind away from our body. Its plot is a hellish twist on the central trope of storytelling - boy meets girl:
Einar meets Gerda; Einar meets a second girl, Lili, who is in fact Einar; Einar, Gerda and Lili form a ménage a trois, complicated by the fact that there are only two people in it; Gerda and Lili try to leave Einar, complicated by the fact that Lili is Einar; Lili dies from complications (as does Einar).
As with the Bruce Jenner roadshow, the high gloss production jars against the desperate subject matter. It is all silk and sheen, far removed from the reality of transsexual hookers dying in the back alleys of New Orleans. And it is twice removed from the real Einar, as the film is based on a novel based loosely on his life. And yet the film is promoted as a true story.
The problem is that we see history through the lens of present language and ideas, and in projecting the present backwards we bend the past out of shape. No, Einar was not the first person to have 'gender re-assignment surgery' as this phrase is modern; a hybrid consisting of both mind/gender and body/surgery. We do not need surgery to change our mind, do we? And yes, he did die from an infection after surgery, but the film omits the salient detail: Einar Wegener died in 1931, aged 48, after having had a womb inserted into his body. Glamorize that. Einar suffered from transsexualism. Transgenderism was yet to have been invented.
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The Danish Girl: People Aren't Born Transgender, But Playing Dress-Up Can Spark Psychological Problems
by Walt Heyer
A recent film accurately portrays the deep emotional and psychological problems that transgender people experience, but it fails to address the reality of life after sex reassignment surgery and the need to treat comorbid psychological disorders.
At times, I felt as if I were trapped in the audience of a never-ending timeshare resort sales pitch. When would the predictable sound bites be over?
The Danish Girl is stuffed with fluffy, gooey sentiments designed to convince “homophobic” or “transphobic” heterosexuals that the painful twists and turns of a transgender person’s life are really a healthy and courageous quest to embrace his or her true self. The film overflows with familiar LGBT talking points. At a key moment, the lead character exclaims, “I finally am who I am!”
The Danish Girl, based on the novel of the same name by David Ebershoff and directed by Tom Hooper, tells the story of Lilli Elbe, one of the first known recipients of sex-reassignment surgery. The movie stars Eddie Redmayne in the role of Einar Wegener/Lilli Elbe, the emerging transgender female. Alicia Vikander costars as Gerda, his devoted wife, who loves her husband deeply and remains faithful to him throughout the years of his downward spiral.
Although the acting was well-done, the film is ultimately little more than an LGBT sales tool. It is true that transgender people are suffering. But what the film fails to address is that, all too often, transgender patients continue to suffer even after surgery, because their psychological problems remain untreated. I know from first-hand experience, as I was once a transgender woman, and I regret my sex-reassignment surgery.
.............
Read more: www.thepublicdiscourse.com
The Danish Girl: People Aren't Born Transgender, But Playing Dress-Up Can Spark Psychological Problems
by Walt Heyer
At times, I felt as if I were trapped in the audience of a never-ending timeshare resort sales pitch. When would the predictable sound bites be over?
The Danish Girl is stuffed with fluffy, gooey sentiments designed to convince “homophobic” or “transphobic” heterosexuals that the painful twists and turns of a transgender person’s life are really a healthy and courageous quest to embrace his or her true self. The film overflows with familiar LGBT talking points. At a key moment, the lead character exclaims, “I finally am who I am!”
The Danish Girl, based on the novel of the same name by David Ebershoff and directed by Tom Hooper, tells the story of Lilli Elbe, one of the first known recipients of sex-reassignment surgery. The movie stars Eddie Redmayne in the role of Einar Wegener/Lilli Elbe, the emerging transgender female. Alicia Vikander costars as Gerda, his devoted wife, who loves her husband deeply and remains faithful to him throughout the years of his downward spiral.
Although the acting was well-done, the film is ultimately little more than an LGBT sales tool. It is true that transgender people are suffering. But what the film fails to address is that, all too often, transgender patients continue to suffer even after surgery, because their psychological problems remain untreated. I know from first-hand experience, as I was once a transgender woman, and I regret my sex-reassignment surgery.
.............
Read more: www.thepublicdiscourse.com
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