Written by Otaku Apologist
The western LGBT movement is an inspirational civil rights advocacy group. Many societal wrongs were fixed by activists who put their skin in the game. The list of problems faced by LGBT individuals were many in past decades. Today, most western men and women who subscribe to the notion of universality can agree that those problems, now mostly fixed, were legitimate causes. Western societies are now able to benefit from human biodiversity, as people in the spectrum are finding their place in the marketplace. They can contribute the most economic value with their talents. I know these folks are valuable, because I employ people in the spectrum, and because I see first-hand how the deviant ways they often, not always but often, experience the world. Sexuality itself isn’t even what’s important, but how the brains of individuals can be very differently organized, allowing them a different perception of things. This deviance in personal experience plugs blind spots that we would have collectively as a species. It makes us more survivable as a species to have multiple kinds of perception to detect dangers and problems, the minds to conceptualize them and the creativity to produce propositions for solutions.
Now, here’s the problem with the current LGBT movement. I will explain this with a poignant real-life parallel.
Back in the second world war, where both my grandpas fought the communist invasion of Finland, our government was in an alliance with Hitler. Yes indeed, we were friends with the OG nazis. Our political leaders tried to downplay our association with verbal trickery, that we weren’t in an alliance, just kinda doing stuff together. Just a special military operation! Yeah, we had a coordinated pincer attack planned on Moscow!
The original plan of Finland’s military leadership was simply to take back the territory we had lost in the first world war. We lost a landmass called Karelia. Taking back Karelia was a sensible goal of the continuation war. But then, we got excited.
We actually started thinking that we could win. We started thinking that winning would be a good thing. Because we didn’t know what Hitler was up to, at least I hope we weren’t. Because if we were aware and ignored it… holy shit. The world learned with a lag that the nazis were in the business of concentration camps with gas chambers and furnaces to dispose of the bodies. Had we won the war, ordinary Russians would’ve likely been gassed, along with many, many other poor souls.
Finland didn’t stick with the plan. We started to seek more territory. The concept that was coined was “Suur-Suomi”, rough translation being “Big Finland”. Hitler did the same mistake of getting excited, and that was his undoing. He had already conquered Europe, he just wasn’t satiated with that. He absolutely had to pick a fight with the Russian bear.
And he lost. All the lebensraum that Hitler had seized from other nation states, he lost. Meanwhile, in the post-war tribunals that followed, as part of the Paris Peace Treaty, Finland was classified as an ally of Nazi Germany. When the bodies had been counted, all the word trickery in the world was not enough to escape judgement.
I still remember being in history class on 8th grade. Our teacher was lecturing us that Finland simply had no choice. The official narrative was called “ajopuu-teoria”, which stated that Finland was pushed to the war, that we had poor options and little agency. It was either alliance with the nazis, or getting rolled over by the communists. We had no choice but to annex territory.
The post-war military tribunals saw through our bullshit. The excuse that “we were just going with the flow” did not absolve us, when the continuation war had clearly been motivated by ambition. We thought we could win. And when your ambitious actions have caused incalculable suffering, especially to young ones, you have agency.
A similar fate awaits the modern LGBT movement. You’ve won your victories, now just hold ground. Stop pushing.
