Let Us Return To My So-Called Obsession

        

    Looking at this photograph of German neo-Nazi Sven Liebich and the first thing you’ll notice (I know I did) is his thick, manly, handlebar mustache. So somebody tell me why, then, is this convicted, obviously male fascist about to be sent to an all-women’s prison? Liebich’s case is puzzling, so bear with me. In July 2023, he was convicted of several offenses, including “extreme-right incitement to hatred, defamation and insult,” as the BBC reported. Photographs from the time depict him yelling into a microphone at a far-right rally and wearing an armband sporting the slogan of the Nazi stormtroopers (although curiously, sans mustache).

    Today, he is still very much a guy. I know this because I passed my biology class in high school, and I’m smarter than Sancho thinks I am. But now Sven calls himself Marla-Svenja Liebich. (Isn’t it amazing what you can do by just adding a couple of vowels to your name?) He also wears a leopard-print top, tiny John Lennon sunglasses and a black floppy hat instead of fascistic totems. Most importantly, for him anyway, is that since last year, he has had a piece of paper that says he is legally female. So he will serve his time in a women’s prison in Chemnitz, Saxony.

    Liebich was able to pull off this magic act with regard to his gender thanks to former German chancellor Olaf Scholz, who last year introduced the Self-Determination Act, which drastically simplified the process of lying about one’s gender on legal documents. All it takes is a simple declaration of one’s new gender and first name at a registry office. One member of Scholz’s cabinet hailed this as a positive way to ‘protect minorities’ – no doubt the neo-Nazi Liebich agrees.

    For all the satirical stupidity of this case, it is just one of many instances when men have been housed in women’s prisons thanks to rules or laws that permit ‘gender self-identification’. (I'll refrain from rehashing all the examples of men now being allowed in women's locker rooms at local gyms, as well as COLLEGE locker rooms, which would turn this into a 10,000 word essay; and nobody wants that, do they!) In some cases, these men have committed heinous crimes against women. But who cares about those women, right? It’s the girls’ fault for going to the gym and expecting to be safe in a women’s locker room...right? What’s important, apparently, is that men who say they are women have their identities respected, whatever risk they might pose to vulnerable incarcerated women. And if convicted rapists can chill with the girls, then what, logically, should stop a transgender neo-Nazi? I mean, let the ravishing begin! It’s party time in Saxony! He’s a guy AND a Nazi. If any of you don’t think that there will be rapes attempted and/or committed by this degenerate (and others like him), then let me tell you how I am a better piano player than Bruce Hornsby.

    As if the case itself were not absurd enough, the media coverage has been even more, uh...stupid. Outlets have tied themselves into verbal pretzel knots trying not to ‘misgender’ this fascist thug. A BBC article refers to Liebich as ‘she’ throughout. Der Spiegel even notes that Liebich has made ‘queerphobic’ statements in the past and suspects that his decision to change genders may have been ‘abusive’. But the law is the law, and the state has no choice but to treat him as a woman.

    The case of the goose-stepping Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada) shows what happens when the world bends its knee to a deranged ideology. And this deranged ideology does nothing but dehumanize women. Women are just “birthing chambers”: Women don’t really matter because even though I’m a man, all I have to do is say I’m a woman, and Viola...it is so! Are we really going to let women be turned into sub-humans who have no identity whatsoever?

    In a sane world, it would bring the whole gender experiment to an immediate, abrupt end. But of course, it won’t. As long as there are laws letting men pretend to be women, there will be no end to the absurdities, nor the dangers to human beings who actually ARE women.

Write to Peter: magtour@icloud.com