Země se fakt zblázní

Today I had an interaction with a Czech psychiatrist of my acquaintance. I told them (that’s not their pronoun, just me concealing their sex) that I was not in the best of moods, that in fact I was in one of the worst states of mind I've been in for some time. I was reeling from an exchange with a friend in which I've been trying to plead for sanity with regards to 'the trans issue'. Since sanity is apparently subjective, I should clarify that I've been arguing against 'gender identity' trumping physical sex in the consideration of anything with consequences in the real world, for what seems to me like the obvious reason of the danger in which it puts human females, otherwise known as women and girls.

I told the psychiatrist that this exchange with the friend, which is just the latest in a long string of interactions in which I’ve been told that my fact-based ‘opinions’ are somehow harmful, offensive and wrong, has left me having suicidal thoughts. The constant barrage of messaging that some things with an objective answer in the physical world are actually complicated and subjective, but in forums where debate should be encouraged one side is mercilessly censored and maligned, takes a toll on a thinking person’s mind and morale. When one’s own friends are the ones telling them that their concerns are in fact evidence of latent prejudice and hatred, the world seems like a bleak place.

The psychiatrist sympathised, and told me (in a purely personal capacity) that now, if they were to diagnose a patient who identifies as a gender other than their sex as ‘delusional’, the psychiatrist would lose their license, as a result of changes made to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (or DSM). Dysphoria is no longer a delusion, because as the abstract puts it, “the area of sex and gender is highly controversial”. Therefore, patients who feel like they might be another gender, cannot be told that this is not true. Because it’s controversial, you see. Instead, their dysphoria is affirmed and possibly medicated, just to be on the safe side.

The psychiatrist told me that they have clients who have jobs in other ‘politically sensitive’ areas where heterodox opinions are not permitted, and some of them have turned to drinking as a way of coping with the guilt they feel at having to publicly state things they know not to be true, in the interest of not losing their job. Fortunately for me I’m not at risk of losing my job, and I’ve managed to self-medicate my own anxiety by just listening to I Like The Way You Kiss Me twenty or so times a day.

I’m reminded, not for the first time, of the Milan Kundera novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, about two men and two women living in Prague during the Prague Spring of 1968 as the Soviets rolled in. Then, they couldn’t speak out for fear of losing their jobs and becoming targets of an authoritarian state, and their friends didn’t want to associate with them for fear of accusations of guilt by association. Now, ideologically captured institutions have managed to convince people that the status quo is freedom and acceptance, and anyone who resists must be on the side of authoritarianism and intolerance.

In the past, resisting oppression must at least have felt like a brave act, even if it was futile. Now, resistance has been made to feel like a betrayal of those you care about, and they will tell you so. The world really is going mad.