A very public castration
Glasgow oh Glasgow
I would like to say I was surprised when a friend sent me a link to this ‘lovely’ little nugget:
As reported: “The avant-garde event was billed as a final send-off to male anatomy before a trans person’s bottom surgery, with the kick delivered alongside a flute accompaniment.
A poster, which circulated online, read: “Come watch me get kicked in the balls one last time before bottom surgery.”
The kick would be delivered “full force, big boot”, “execution style”, and by a “large d***”, it said.”
This ‘happening’ was staged in Queen’s Park, a popular park on the southside of Glasgow not far from where I used to live. On a sunny Sunday (such as the one pictured) the park would have been populated by hundreds of young children with their families. ‘Bottom surgery’ that vacuous euphemism that masks the horror of full castration of healthy male genitals. The result of which is lifelong medical complications, suffering, pain and early death. But woo hoo! Isn’t this FUN! There was a flute! A flute!
The whole thing smacks of mental illness, the utter disconnect of the lanyard class and the smug banality of evil. In the background a smiling Mama stands with her infant in her Ergo sling. This is the incarnation of the smiling excesses of the French Court pre-revolution whilst its citizens starved.
That said it was of no surprise to me. Govanhill, which is adjacent to this park, is the centre point for progressive left activism in Glasgow. Consider that this is where the Red Sunday School and Rumpus Room base themselves which centre making toddlers, children, and teens into activists….
There is something profoundly grotesque about the whole thing when you consider the genuine problems that plague the area. A rape on Christmas Eve for example.
And Glasgow more broadly….
The phrase the ‘social contract’ has been bandied about a lot lately. Not least because it seems to have gone missing. In so much as our political class ignore its citizens, citizens seem to forget they have any responsibility beyond their own drives and narcissism. Is it any wonder things are falling apart at the seams?
What is one supposed to tie morals and ethics to anyway? Maybe at a time they would have been explicitly linked to something like the Ten Commandments:
These days we hold no such explicit moral moorings on a societal level. So when a mentally ill man makes a poster about his castration and people show up to celebrate it by publicly degrading him whilst small children are known to be in the vicinity…. Well then I wonder where this is headed.
Insomuch as the new New York Mayor Mamdani famously announced this week….
Who makes the rules? Who decides? What happens when the collective social contract is one of tyranny? What happens when the collective social contract demands celebration of a public castration? What then? For years I watched the city I love be dominated more and more by politicians who were mostly invested in kingdom building…for themselves. As Jenny Lindsay wrote so succinctly in her Scotman’s column
There is no accountability – no acknowledgement, even – of the significant, dangerous, cultural and political schisms the SNP have fomented in Scotland. Their complacent agenda is unfortunately mirrored by ‘leaders’ across whole swathes of public life
There is a fine balance between individual agency and free will and a responsibility to the wider world. Some have rightfully criticised Mamdani’s leanings citing other examples of ‘collectivism’ in history….
On the other hand, what happens when the uber libertarian ideals of anything goes as directed by the market leads us to the buying and selling of body parts be it via prostitution or surrogacy or organ trafficking?
What is the answer?
Most are familiar with the Hippocratic oath ‘do no harm’. This is a simplified version of the origin text “I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but I will never use it to injure or wrong them”. In other words it contains personal agency directed for the good of the other.
The public event in Queen’s Park noted above contained none of this of course. Not for the man who chose to be punched. Not for the people who came to cheer. Not for the children caught in the crosshairs witnessing the horror. Not for the doctors who will inevitably bring a lifetime of further suffering to him as they castrate him.
It’s time to reset the social contract. For us to awaken our shared responsibility to the wider world in so much as we are gifted with personal agency to make individual choices. To shame those who fail in their duties and ensure they face the full force of consequences for their actions. To find shared purpose again in small and large ways.
Here’s hoping anyway….
Kate, Great to see you writing about and keeping an eye on Glasgow.
Not just children nearby, though that alone should be enough to stop the show, but a city groaning under real, grinding misery. Drug deaths, sexual violence, communities hollowed out. When elites ignore those realities and instead celebrate a public act of self destruction as progress, they are not being radical. They are being irresponsible. This is the banality of evil in lifestyle form. Nobody feels accountable because everyone is “affirming” something.
A social contract that cannot say “this is degrading and we will not applaud it” is not neutral. It is already tyrannical, because it demands public assent to harm. If we no longer believe in restraint, duty, or the obligation to protect the vulnerable, especially children, then we should at least stop pretending this is about kindness. It is about power, indulgence, and the grim insistence that nothing is sacred except the right to be applauded while breaking yourself.
In Scots law, this "kick in the balls" would constitute criminal assault (consent is no defence), and for the act to take place in public would be an aggravating factor.
I read the Jenny Lindsay article and couldn't fault it. It was excellent. Eighteen years of SNP rule has left Scotland moribund, mired in virtue signaling politics while our public services have been badly corroded.
It is a stark lesson in what happens when the same "Progressive Left" are given an extended period of power : inaction and moral decay.