Criticizing gender ideology today means entering a minefield. And those who have the honesty to speak up if they disagree with that ideology, can corroborate that.
What does this transgender craze that reigns in every corner of the West represent? According to Camille Paglia, the US heretical feminist, contrarian and libertarian, it is the sign of the decline of Western culture and civilization.
A literary editor at a New York agency was just fired for “offensive” comments about transgender people. Sasha White was pushed out by the Tobias Literary Agency after expressing solidarity with the author of “Harry Potter,” J.K. Rowling, in the wake of a bitter controversy over feminism and transgender. Her bio was already provocative in saying “gender non conformity is wonderful; denying biological sex not so.” Then there was her refusal to use gender fluid neutral pronouns. White's firing from the Tobias Literary Agency was confirmed by both the company's president, Lane Heymont, and the agency's Twitter account”.
White’s case follows a similar one just a month ago that saw a children's best-selling author fired after expressing support for Rowling. Gillian Philip had added the hashtag #IStandWithJKRowling to her Twitter account. So Working Partners, which produce literary series for publishing houses such as “Erin Hunter” (published in English by Harper Collins) decided to do without Philip's services.
So you see, criticizing gender ideology really is like entering a minefield.
But every time they expect J. K. Rowling to back down, to apologize, to re-educate herself, it doesn't happe. Instead, she doubles down each time. Rowling has just announced that she has returned an award associated with the Kennedy family after being accused of “transophobia”.
This transgender obsession is a sign the writing is probably on the wall for Western civilization.
“Civilizations have gone through recurrent cycles” Paglia explains. “Extravaganzas of gender experimentation sometimes precede cultural collapse, as they certainly did in Weimar Germany. Now as then, there are forces aligning outside the borders, scattered fanatical hordes where the cult of heroic masculinity still has tremendous force”. Like Islam.
"We are in a civilization of exhaustion,” French philosopher Michel Onfray has just said. "We only love what hates us, everything that destroys us is perceived as great.”
This transgender dictatorship is the symbol of a very dangerous and unstoppable attraction of the West towards its own abyss: a fluid, liquid, very weak identity, a post-religious, post-family, post-heroic identity.
If the West loses the fight against these internal post-Western enemies and it is overcome by the external anti-Western ones, the decent and brave among us will have to find a place to which to retreat. But where?
This new erotocratic Western man does not tolerate any dissent. Education, public and private morals, cultural environment, political pressure, legislative and judicial decisions permeate and surround our children, our schools and our families. It is increasingly difficult to find a secure enclave that is devoid of that nihilistic influence.
Giulio Meotti is, an Italian journalist with Il Foglio, writes a twice-weekly column for Arutz Sheva. He is the author, in English, of the book "A New Shoah", that researched the personal stories of Israel's terror victims, published by Encounter and of "J'Accuse: the Vatican Against Israel" published by Mantua Books, in addition to books in Italian. His writing has appeared in publications, such as the Wall Street Journal, Gatestone, Frontpage and Commentary.