"I'd rather be rude than a liar."

—Magdalen Berns

Recently, a short video by conservative political commentator Matt Walsh has inspired numerous videos, the kind of content sequence that is often minor internet drama.

But these videos sprang from a reflexive response to plain talk that has serious implications for honest discourse and our future.

Everything started when Walsh reacted to a video by TikTok trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney.

A trained actor who appeared in the Broadway hit The Book of Mormon, Mulvaney is widely known for "Days of Girlhood" videos, referring to women's private parts as a "Barbie pouch," and weirdly presuming that women engage in tampon-centered bonding.

Calling attention to his makeup, costume, and hair extensions, Dylan said he was the hottest he'd ever been.  He acts as though he's gained, but won't use, his newly bestowed power to steal husbands.  He intends for thousands of future generations to view this video evidence of this hotness. 

With language blunt and direct, but not crude, Walsh observed that makeup, surgery, and lighting tricks don't make Mulvaney attractive or feminine.  Suppressed masculine qualities aren't replaced with feminine qualities.  Neither masculine nor feminine, Dylan is artificial and eerie — a deepfake, with a contrived personality.  Walsh suspected that Dylan's supporters either feared the lectures or were virtue-signaling.  Mulvaney demeans women and girls for financial gain.

A week after I enjoyed Walsh's remarks, videos Better Bachelor and Justin is Lost supporting Matt's stance alerted me to extensive criticism of Walsh's mean and undiplomatic language. 

There were already responses to the first round of videos, with some critics retreating from earlier remarks.

Criticisms on channels including Timcast, Triggernometry, and Prager U shared elements.

We're on Matt's side.  Matt spoke truth but said it wrong.  Mean words don't change minds, appeal to the other side, or attract new people, and they threaten society's kumbaya quotient.  Make the point another way.  (Perhaps conservatives should make use of semaphore, considering LGBTQetc. fondness for flags).

There were also some unique takes.  Tim Pool preferred a sedate, "academic" approach.  He mentioned gender and trans conditions, such as autogynephilia (sexual arousal from crossdressing), sounding protective of those too frail to endure biological facts.  Pool's changed opinion appeared in a Feb. 24 Daily Wire post.  Mean words aren't the worst thing, weighed against the pro-trans side's destructiveness.

Triggernometry's Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster's animated reaction was that Walsh failed to change hearts and minds.  Such an approach appeals to his established audience, accomplishing nothing but clicks, which don't accomplish anything (even while maximizing clicks is a thing).

Interestingly, self-proclaimed allies don't seem to see the appeal of Walsh's approach.

The Quartering's Jeremy Hambly and Sydney Watson declared Walsh accurate and unnecessarily mean.  Hambly admitted to being a softie.  Watson voiced disgust for Mulvaney.  Hambly said later said he's fine with Matt's approach being different from his.

Many buy the left's premise that flamboyantly disruptive individuals are unrepresentative of average trans people unobtrusively living an opposite-sex identity.  The dysphoria and mental illnesses that created Mulvaney are supposedly compatible with most trans living low-visibility, gray-suit lifestyles, constrained by life-threatening fragility.

In "I'm Not Backing Down," Walsh explains that his goal isn't making nice with "the side that hates us no matter what we say or do."  He'd rather inspire and rally defenders of our culture.  Walsh admits he's angry about the tactics, demands, and effects of people whose claims are crazy and dishonestly depict truth as bigotry.  He's angry that surgery and drugs that mutilate and sterilize are being pushed to children, and that the other side wants to create more Dylan Mulvaneys.

I think more harsh truth needs to be served up.

Dangers of MtFs in women's spaces have been framed as opportunistic criminals, as if trans and criminality are mutually exclusive.  But data reveal there's risk.

A 2020 report about prisons in England Wales showed that 16.8% of typical men, 3%, of women, and 58.9% of MtF inmates were convicted sex offenders.  Approximately 20% of MtFs were convicted for rape.  MtFs started being imprisoned with women in 2017, increasing numbers of male inmates claiming trans identity, hoping to access female prisoners or benefit from the false belief that estrogen decreases dangerousness.  Among early MtFs in female prisons, "Jessica Winfield" had a life sentence for raping two girls.  A 2017 study showed that half of UK MtF inmates are classified sex offenders or dangerous.

A 2020 Sexology Institute of Romania report classifies transvestitism as a paraphilia in men.  Crossdressing, gender dysphoria, fetishes, exhibitionism, voyeurism, masochism, and erotic asphyxia frequently co-occur.  The sexual compulsions and difficulties with relationships distress these men.  It's not the glamorous lifestyle activists advertise.

Reactions to Matt Walsh showed a reflex for self-imposed censorship beyond social media community guidelines, contrasting to the opposition sneering at our feelings, goodwill, compromise, and common ground.  They demand punishment for words as attempted homicide, but there's no restraint in their speech.  They screech, bully, and intimidate us in the name of prioritizing marginalized voices, controlled by international activist celebrities and politicians.

Meanwhile, trans activists post what they think and want to do to us, often in degrading, insulting, and threatening remarks and fantasies.  I want them to post freely whatever language and imagery they choose — out of principle, and strategy.  We should observe opponents outside videos and interviews intended for the wider public.  The other materials they post in less guarded moments, collected and posted by savvy defenders of our civilization, provide a comprehensive picture of the other side.  Brace yourself, then check out the video montage "In the Ladies" and numerous posts and images collected on the "Terf Is a Slur" website.

To emphasize the serious deficit in conservatives' grasp of the depths of the other side's disdain and vitriol for anyone less than fully compliant with all demands in the name of trans acceptance, here are two quotes from Terf Is a Slur:

"It's be nice if there were roving gangs of trans women beating the s--- out of transphobes, but alas, that doesn't seem to be the case."

"Imagine awesome Trans Girls tearing out Terfs' tongues and cutting off their hands so they can never speak or type their transmysoginistic b-------.  Now imagine those trans girls using those hands and tongues as sex toys and posting the videos online."

Imagine what happens to our world if people who think this way prevail with no opposition.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Wikipedia (cropped), CC BY-SA 2.0.