In A Boy's Spirit?

Nothing could be more Thatcherite than a literally self-made woman or a literally self-made man. The gender critical philosophers who are making this point are not the joking kind. This is Philosophy of the highest seriousness.

Therefore, the Conservatives had been all ready to legislate for gender self-identification. Only the DUP stopped them. In October 2021, watched by her husband, Carrie Johnson addressed a specifically LGBT+ fringe meeting. Does either of them believe that only a woman has a cervix? Funny how he was never asked, when the whole thing was happening on his watch.

As for her, Stonewall, whose rally that was, would not have invited her if she had been any friend of biological reality. Do not bet against their return to 10 Downing Street in 2023, which, were it to happen, would be the last change of Prime Minister in this Parliament.

Yet hope springs eternal. The Johnsons insisted on being married in the Catholic Church, and I have always suspected that the strict secrecy of the ceremony was to avoid publicity of the then Prime Minister's Communion. At some level, he and his wife want to be good Catholics.

Most of the theoretical critique of gender ideology has its roots in Marxism, including in that tradition's internal feminist critique. The work being done remains invaluable, but most of the Left has succumbed to gender self-identification, which is a flat denial of even the most blatantly obvious material reality. 

Demonstrably, then, dialectical materialism has failed to provide the robust material realism without which there can be no pursuit of economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, led by those who suffered most as a result of economic inequality, namely the working class, and led by those who suffered most as a result of international conflict, namely the working class and the youth.

What is needed is Thomism, which by definition exists within the wider Augustinian tradition. Fundamental to both is absolute fidelity to the Roman Magisterium, which is itself irrevocably committed to the Thomist metaphysical system, within which its own indispensable role precludes any degeneration comparable to that of the ancestrally Marxian Left into gender self-identification. Philosophy needs the Rock of the Petrine Office no less than Theology does.

Just as there can be no meaningful claim to be pro-life without an active commitment to economic equality and to international peace, so there can be no such commitment without material realism. There can be no secure material realism, nor, therefore, any science, without Thomism. And there can be no Thomism without the Roman Obedience, which one adopts either entirely and at whatever cost, or not at all.

Applied to the present situation, this has implications that are vastly more egalitarian economically, vastly more pacific internationally, and vastly more democratic politically, than anything that Marxism could ever devise, much less deliver. This is not to build the house from the roof down. Fidelity to the Magisterium requires Thomism, which entails material realism, which compels a critique of the present economic and geopolitical order such as leads inexorably to the pursuit of equality and peace through democracy.

What would you have instead? Nothing could be more Thatcherite than a literally self-made woman or a literally self-made man. Therefore, the Conservatives had been all ready to legislate for gender self-identification. Only the DUP stopped them. Ultimately, though, Protestantism is an inadequate as dialectical materialism to this task.

Stark and timely warnings of the perils of hyper-Augustinianism, unmoored from the Magisterium, include the rise of Unitarianism among the English Presbyterians, the Dutch Remonstrant Brotherhood, the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church of Ireland, the Socinian 'New Licht' within the early Free Church of Scotland, and the descent of New England Puritanism into "the Fatherhood of God, the Brotherhood of Man, and the Neighborhood of Boston".

From that last sprang the Transcendentalism of Louisa May Alcott. Very much pursuant to that way of thinking, she would indeed have been classified as transgender if she had been growing up today. Nothing could be more Thatcherite, and there is only one protection against it. That in turn provides further protection from anything that was remotely Thatcherite, which it compels to be destroyed.

All main political parties are Thatcherite, and therefore away with gender ideology. Thankfully, we are heading for a hung Parliament. To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.