The Silence of the Sane

On the normalizing of perverse, psychopathic, transgender butchery.

A friend just sent me the following image.

The image appears to be that of a young girl who has received a double mastectomy in order to realize her fantasy of becoming a boy. The butterfly tattoo on her throat reminds me of Jame Gumb—AKA “Buffalo Bill”—for whom the death's-head hawkmoth symbolizes metamorphosis from female to male.

Jame Gumb wished to undergo a sex change operation but was denied the procedure due to his history of violence against gay men and women. The shrink who evaluated him concluded he was suffering from profound self-loathing that could not be properly treated with a sex change operation.

What makes Gumb such a spooky character is his weird obsession with being a girl even though he is an extremely aggressive man. While Ted Levine’s performance is surely one of the most remarkable in cinematic history, it didn’t make him a big star because people were so profoundly creeped out by it.

The girl’s face strikes me as expressive of the anguish and confusion that one would expect in a young, naive, and troubled girl in the grip of dawning awareness that she has been mutilated. Her delicate jaw, slight shoulders, beardless chin and hairless chest remain those of a girl, but her breasts have been cut off.

And what are we to make of the image of the man standing behind the girl? As the Old Masters understood, a painting may provoke in the viewer a host of complex thoughts and emotions. In its sheer expressiveness, the photograph reminds me of images by Caravaggio and Goya. The picture of a woman being preyed upon reminds me of a 1781 painting titled “The Nightmare” by Henri Fuseli in which a demonic incubus squats on the body of a sleeping maiden. Fuseli was apparently trying to tell us something about the evil forces in the world that prey on young, vulnerable women.

Why aren’t there more guys like me and Dr. McCullough who are speaking out against the Satanic butchery of children? Have otherwise sane adults been swayed by crude “gender dysphoria” propaganda? Are sane people afraid that psychopaths like Jame Gumb will come after them? The Silence of the Sane is what enables this madness to continue.