The following comment by Vito B. Caiati on an earlier post of mine deserves to be brought to the top of the queue. Minor edits and bracketed content added; otherwise verbatim. The above title is mine. Vito would probably not use the polemical word ‘lunacy.’ Comments of mine are in 10-point below.
Consider for a moment the fact that the personae of so many progressive women are structured around solidarity with designated marginalized groups, such as biological men suffering from gender dysphoria who identify as females and demand the right to participate in women’s sports and share women’s private spaces.
In this case, persons with egos of some strength are able simultaneously to hold onto (1) the observable fact that human sexual dimorphism results in marked disparities in strength, speed, and endurance between the sexes and that (2) opposing discrimination against marginalized groups is a worthy public policy position. Thus, a healthy ego rejects any resolution of this tension by simply effacing the rights of women in sports or private spaces.
Both (1) and (2) make a strong claim on our acceptance, although the nature of the discrimination mentioned in (2) needs to be spelled out. And yet the two propositions are in tension: although the merits of each ought to be acknowledged, they cannot both be accepted. How resolve the tension? A sane (non-lunatic) solution is by holding fast to what is empirically evident, namely, (1), and then reformulating (2) so as to make it logically compatible with (1). That is what I would say, and I am sure Vito would agree. The question then arises: why don’t our opponents on this issue agree? Read on.
For progressive women, however, once the status of marginalized groups is elevated inside their personae to a sanctified status, then any acknowledgement of sexual differences, however empirically evident, appears as a betrayal; such perceptions are thus repressed or relativized (“sex is a spectrum,” etc.). These repressed perceptions pile up in [what Carl Gustav Jung calls] “the shadow,” where they are intensified and distorted, and are projected onto critics, who are viciously attacked, their arguments denounced as “hate,” rather than countered rationally, as in the case of J.K. Rowling and so many other advocates of women’s rights. This all ends up in enantiodromia, and the abandonment of earlier, hard fought for, feminist goals. [‘Enantiodromia’ is Jung’s term for the tendency of any extreme to produce its opposite.]
In the above paragraph, Vito is doing two things. He is first of all giving a Jungian psychological explanation of why our opponents will not accept what to Vito and to me is obviously the case, namely, the fact of sexual differences between men and women, differences that make it unfair to allow biological males to compete against biological females in sporting events. One could ask, of course, whether the Jungian psychological explanation is the best explanation. Might there be a better one? There is also the meta-question: Is it ever logically kosher to refute a proposition by psychologizing those who advance the proposition?
The second thing Vito is doing in the above paragraph is pointing out that the extreme transgenderist position of feminists who traditionally demanded equal rights generates its opposite, namely, the violation of the rights of women and girls to privacy and fairness.
“O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall / Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed.” (Gerard Manley Hopkins, “No Worst, There is None”)