Gerard Casey - Hidden Agender: Transgenderisms Struggle Against Reality

Hidden Agender is the third and final part of a research project that I began in 2017 in response to a challenge I felt obliged to meet. The first book to be published was ZAP , a defence of free speech and toleration, and an attack on the currently sacrosanct dogmas of diversity, inclusion and equality; the second was After #MeToo , a critique of radical feminism, focusing primarily, but not exclusively, on the latent misandry of the #MeToo movement, and its implications, both social and legal, for relations between the sexes. All three books are, in their own ways, a defence of freedom against prejudice, social intolerance and legal intimidation.

Hidden Agender is not a book I ever enthusiastically desired to write. Having carried out extensive research and done some preliminary writing on the topic throughout 2018 and 2019, I spent the months of December 2019 through February 2020 in a more or less constant state of Will I?, Wont I? The advice of those I took into my confidence was, for the most part, a set of variations onDont do it!, Are you crazy?, Do you want to draw the wrath of the transactivist establishment on you?, Its not worth the grief youre sure to get. Many times I was inclined to take this advice, more especially as it coincided with my own not unreasonable fears, combined with my deep-seated inclination to avoid work if at all possible. My courage wasnt exactly bolstered by witnessing the barrage of abuse that landed on the head of the normally PC-friendly J. K. Rowling in June 2020 for having the temerity to support a woman who was fired from her job for expressing gender critical views on Twitter (gender critical meaning simply that she didnt believe people can change their biological sex), and for Rowlings objecting, humorously, to the bizarre expression people who menstruate instead of just women . No sooner had I overcome my innate pusillanimity and the depression of winter than the politically-induced panic surrounding the Covid-19 virus broke out in March 2020. I was so depressed (again) and angered by the political establishments rush to impose quasi-totalitarian restrictions on basic freedoms, and by its politically inept but economically effective destructive interference with peoples means of making a living, that I found it difficult to concentrate on anything as seemingly trivial and foolish as transgender ideology. Since you are reading these words, it is obvious that, despite the serried ranks of discouragement, cowardice, depression and laziness, I have persevered in my efforts. Whether my expenditure of time and energy was worth it, only time will tell.There really shouldnt be any reason for this book to exist. That there is, says somethingand not a good somethingabout the deep intellectual, moral and legal confusion of the times in which we live. If this book were to be redundant when or soon after it is published, then I should be a very happy, but also a very surprised, man. If, as I suspect, it is not redundant, then I should welcome its rapidly becoming an historical curiosity, to serve as a memorial to a cultural moment of madness, and perhaps to help hinder (vain hope!) similar mad moments in the future.

Of the three books that this research project has produced, Hidden Agender has been by far the most difficult to write. In part, this is because I feel like an idiot having to argue for what is blatantly obvious to anyone who is not in the blinkered grip of transgender ideology: Males cannot become female ; females cannot become male . How difficult is it to grasp this truth, a truth so blatant that no one until the last microsecond of human existence has ever thought to deny, a denial that, to adapt the words of Jane Austen in Sense and Sensibility, scarcely deserves the compliment of rational opposition. It is absurd to pretend that such changes can take place, and it is tyrannical to force people by law to pretend that they can, and to punish them if they persist in speaking the truth. In addition to this intellectual equivalent of stepping on a stair that isnt there, a practical difficulty I encountered in writing this book was that the various topics tended to bleed into each other, so much so that it was far from obvious which topic should be dealt with before which and in what way and in how much depth. In the end, I made the decisions I have made in the ordering and exposition of the text, with the result that there is perhaps more anticipation, overlap and repetition than would normally be desirable or acceptable.

Much good material has been published already in relation to this topic and, where it is suitable, I have made use of such material in this book. A look at the bibliography will give some idea of what is available, and this is only a representative sample. From this material, however, some books must be singled out for special mention: Ryan Andersons When Harry Became Sally , and Gabriele Kubys The Global Sexual Revolution: Destruction of Freedom in the Name of Freedom , and the brilliantly written, intellectually incisive, and eminently quotable book by Theodore Dalrymple, Our Culture, Whats Left of It . The final chapter, inasmuch as it has any claim to intellectual respectability, relies heavily on the ground-breaking work of Pitirim Sorokin in his Social and Cultural Dynamics . As I was putting the finishing touches to my manuscript in July/August 2020, Joanna Williamss The Corrosive Impact of Transgenderism appeared, just in time for me to incorporate some of its findings in Hidden Agender . To be sure, there are some differences between Williamss approach and mine, but our conclusions are for the most part convergent which, if what we say is true, is to be expected.

The book falls into two distinct sections. The first section, chapters 1, 2 & 3, makes some use of my competence in philosophical analysis, and treats of sex and gender, gender dysphoria, and transgender ideology; the second section, chapters 4 & 5, makes use of my competence in law, and treats of transgenderism in a legal context. These two substantive sections are sandwiched between a brief introduction that disposes of some preliminary issues, and a brief conclusion (chapter 6) that sketches the broader social context in which transgenderism is, I believe, to be located.

When asked what the most difficult aspect of his job as Prime Minister was, Harold Macmillan is reputed to have responded, Events, dear boy, events! It is the inevitable fate of books such as this to be overtaken by events. Just as I was finishing the writing up of my material on the US Equality Act in chapter 4, I was blind-sided, as were many commentators, by the US Supreme Courts bizarre and baffling decision in Bostock. When I first began to write up, it looked as if the UK Government was going to permit self-identification in its proposed reform of the Gender Recognition Act, so that some passages in the book reflect that expectation. However, as I began to conclude the writing up, it became apparent that the Government wasnt going to allow self-identification after all, but what other changes it would permit were not immediately evident. By the time Hidden Agender is actually published, who knows what else will have happened or been done, where, when, by or to whom? However, sufficient unto any book is the evil thereof, and the future must take care of itself.