PASSING STRANGE

What's the Deal With Chase Strangio?

Chase Strangio threw her given name, Kate Bachrach, away for her current odd moniker which wouldn’t pass muster in a badly written super-hero comic penned by a friendless teen. Nor would her ‘impressive’ mustache, brought to us courtesy of the exogenous testosterone she takes to hide her femaleness. The trans media face of American Civil Liberties Union is a tireless advocate for ‘trans kids’ and their parents.

Like all trans activists, she perplexes me. I understand that she’s a true-believer in trans, it’s obvious in the steps she’s taken to masculinize. You can hear it in her voice, which seems permanently stuck between young woman and squeaky teen boy.

I get stuck on the thought process accompanying trans. I know, for example, that most AGPs don’t believe they’re women. They act out ‘woman’ to gratify themselves sexually and to cause distress in others. Those convinced of their femaleness are outliers among their fetish-addled brethren. I think the same applies to women who impersonate men. Sexual thrills might not motivate women as frequently, but I don’t think most are deluded enough to believe they’re actual men.

Strangio might not even buy her own hype - she has ‘he/him’ and ‘they/them’ on her Twitter bio. Could the ‘they/them’ be a concession, however slight, to her femaleness? Could it be a recognition, however glancing, that we know she’s female despite the ‘stache but could we please use ‘neutral’ pronouns in consideration of her mighty but futile effort to try to forget her sex? Could it be a sliver of acknowledgment that her ‘transness’, and by extension everyone else’s, is really an elaborate performance that the actors must engage in to maintain their psychic equilibrium?

I can only speculate about why Strangio seeks to obscure her femaleness. It could stem from a variety of psychiatric conditions (OCD, ADHD, Autism, delusional disorders), psychological conditions (narcissistic personality disorder, borderline personality disorder) or be a response to trauma. Whatever its root, LARPing as a man makes sense to her. Which circumstances in her life taught her that in order to be psychologically and emotionally whole, she must amputate her breasts and become dependent on exogenous testosterone? Why is being visibly female so intolerable that she’ll damage her health in order to hide it?

Maybe Strangio suffers from internalized homophobia. She possibly feels compelled to satisfy the heteronormative standard in our society that ‘others’ gay people. Strangio may have been taught, by her family or by social forces outside of it, that ‘straight’ is the only right way to be. It could be that she was taught only boys are sexually attracted to girls. Gay people may have been characterized as predatory, evil, disgusting, crazy, just flat out wrong. In order to be ‘right’ she’d have to turn herself into a ‘male’ to ‘justify’ her attraction to other girls. Turning against herself, against her desire for female sex partners, she’d torture her body into a facsimile of maleness all the while knowing that she’s still female. The sense of failure must be crushing.

Now let’s look at the grooming. Strangio sells the ‘trans’ lie to familes by sounding the trans persecution alarm. She tweets that trans kids are under attack from TERFs denying their right to exist. The United States government kills ‘trans kids’ by to revoking their health care. Schools drive them to suicide by banning then from sports and restrooms. Parents must be ever vigilant against these forces that will annihilate their children simply for existing. Strangio makes it sound like gender-confused kids are being hunted down in the street by wild-eyed Terven with torches and axe-handles. Her currencies are misinformation and fear, but don’t discount the narcissism.

Pushing the notion of ‘trans kids’ sets the gender-addled apart from ‘regular’ children, according them special status. The parents of these ‘special’ children also get to be special. Special people deserve privilege. ‘Trans’ means deciding to play on the boys or girls team, which is regular kids get no say in. Trans kids can choose to use the boys or the girls restroom, another privilege denied to standard issue kids. Gender-addled kids get to dictate how other people talk about them in their absence via preferred pronouns while non-trans kids have to make do without setting the terms of other people’s word usage. If you believe you can or should be the opposite sex. you can decide whether or not to tell the truth about your biological sex but the ‘normies’ are stuck with the reality of how they were born. Anyone who would stands between the special and their prizes (choice of restroom, sports team and lies) must be fought against, vilified, dehumanized.

The conferring privilege is so imperative, it should now be carried into the courts. Strangio, like trans rights activists in the UK, is now urging parents to consider legislative actions if schools or other public bodies ‘discriminate’ against their children. They can claim ‘oppression’ via ‘transphobia’ while holding the whip-hand over teachers, school districts, coaches, managers of single-sex facilities, anyone who will not accept the specialness of ‘trans’.

In addition to litigiousness, Strangio encourages accepting ‘trans’ as child’s most important characteristic. In an interview with ‘Scary Mommy’ (which I’ll be discussing on the channel) she says, “loving and affirming our children and allowing them the ability to explore and self-determine who they are is the most important aspect of them thriving.” Really? Not affirming their worth as human beings? Not nurturing musical, artistic, academic talents? Not providing them with a stable family or a safe, secure place to grow up in? What about supporting them financially, making sure they eat a reasonable diet, brush their teeth and get to bed on time? Limiting their exposure to porn and other vile internet content isn’t as important as allowing them to ‘self'-determine’, even if it them to amputate body parts and poison themselves with steroids?

Peddling the ‘you’re special’ angle reinforces Strangio’s own poor choices. I’d bet that every time she tweets or otherwise ‘validates’ trans identity, a good portion of that reinforcement comes right back to her. Convincing kids that drugs and surgery are ‘valid’ shifts the norm away from living without unnecessary medical intervention. As people like Strangio become less rare, the message ‘we’re special because we’re trans’ becomes more prevalent, further shifting the norm away from people who accept the immutability of their biological sex. Elevating medicalization from ‘useless’ to ‘required for life’ reifies the ‘specialness’ and the ‘realness’ of trans identity, helping medicalization gain more traction while increasing the draw of kids and parents. Want to be special? Be trans!

People like Strangio attain celebrity status. Like many celebrities, their negative behavior makes headlines, rather than the actual accomplishments. No one wants to hear about Kate Bachrach staying up all night to study for law school exams just like all the other students. They want to hear about Chase Strangio’s adventures with testosterone! They want to hear about her battles with the forces of evil that oppress trans youth! Strangio is more than happy to fill that role on social media, in radio interviews and at speaking events all over the country. She’s a hero.

Is Strangio encouraging other lesbians to go to law school? Is she encouraging girls with a more male-typical interests to pursue a work for non-profit organizations or careers in public service? No, she’s encouraging kids to pursue sterilization via drugs and surgery as a way to be ‘special’.

Telling parents that ‘trans’ is the most important thing about their kid could spur parents to ignore everything about their child that’s not related to gender struggles - the kid’s ability to tell a joke, or to work hard, their interest in science - all of this must take a backseat to ‘trans’ or be abandoned entirely. It’s hard, if not impossible, to play sports when bones don’t mineralize properly after years of insult by puberty blockers. It’s hard to pay attention to school work and art projects when wrong-sex hormones destabilize moods obliterating the ability to concentrate.

Does Strangio think the most important or interesting thing she does is her ‘man’ impression? Does she really believe that the best way to actualize oneself as a masculine-presenting female is to chemically and surgically mutilate oneself? Is her need to justify her own self-destructiveness so great that she has to mislead others into going down the same dark path? If so, her misogyny and homophobia have been weaponized with gender-confused kids in general and butch lesbians in particular in her sites. She’s a homophobic parents dream. Who needs conversion therapy? Forget about praying away the gay! Surgicize those troublesome parts out of existence! Kill that lust with drugs!

The harm caused by these procedures doesn’t disappear because trans rights activists like Strangio describe them as ‘life saving’. Maybe kids following in her body-shaming, misogynist footsteps saves Strangio’s life. Maybe it makes her day to know that other people are ruining their endocrine systems with exogenous hormones right along with her. She may do a little dance of glee knowing that other lesbians emulate woman-hating example by amputating their breasts, taking testosterone and growing peculiar facial hair. The knowledge that other masculine-presenting girls will permanently damage their vocal cords as she has, might give her a nice warm glow. Maybe Strangio loves other lesbians so despising their same-sex attraction that they’ll eliminate their ability to feel sexual attraction at all through mutilating genital surgeries. She may jump for joy if some parent contacts her to say ‘we’re on the waiting list for phallo!’ Will these same parents ask her who to sue when their child develops intractible, life-threatening urinary tract infections from repeated genital surgeries'? Will Strangio celebrate ‘trans’ then?