A modest proposal, for preventing the Adults of the white, cisgender people of the United States and United Kingdom, from being a Burden on their Children, and for making them beneficial to the publick, follows.

It is a melancholy object to those, who walk through our great cities, or travel in the various countries, when they find social media’s streets, roads, and cabin doors crowded with gender criticals who call themselves of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six adults, all in fine linens, importuning every passenger for an outrage at the existence of trans children. These gender criticals, instead of being able to think for their honest lyvelyhood, are forced to employ all their time strolling Twitter to beg for sustenance for their helpless fellow adults who, as they grow old, either turn violent for want of thought, or leave their dear Feminism to fight for the Pretender in Hogwarts, or sell themselves to the Proud Boyes.

—T.S. Swift, undated manuscript

There is a book, a very ridiculous book that is yet not satire, subtitled The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, whose cover bears the likeness of a young white girl with her midsection cut-out. This hole in the physical book, one is forced to imagine, is made to allow the curious reader to move their members—fingers, one must presume—through it, fingering and thus penetrating the horrifying absence of a womb that, one also gathers, is their best facsimile of being transgender and a child. 

I cannot in good faith recommend that you read this scurrilously pornographic book, the cover being so offensive to common sensibilities that one scarcely dares to imagine the contents that lurk within. Indeed, I should very fervently ask you not to, for it is the product of a terribly sad state of affairs to which the present writing is addressed. We are confronting a specter, today, of a pitiable, miserable class of failed adults who, having been quite at-risk for some time, are increasingly falling victim to a trend, a social contagion, really, that our best scientists call “gender critical ideology.” These poor souls, utter failures at being autonomous, caring and reasonable adults, have become terrible burdens on their children, upon whom they freely wish death as respite from the craze they judge to be seducing daughters. 

How pathetic it is, I know, to be so poorly formed and inept as a mature specimen we call adult that you would mistake trans children for more powerful than thou. Alas, I urge you to resist your emotions and please think of them nonetheless, these wretched adults, for without a proposal for their proper guardianship and reform, they shall soon become so terrible a burden upon our children that they might bring ruin upon us all. It is a matter of mathematics that I will not bore you with but, suffice it to say, it concerns the rapid spread of ideas and beliefs with their corresponding actions, this social Contagioune, one greatly aided by internet technologies.

Perhaps you have encountered these imperiled adults before their conversion or know of some who are presently at risk. In reviewing your loved ones and acquaintances, there are several key symptoms to observe:

·      A general hysterical sense of being always under attack and in danger despite occupying the most moneyed, comfortable, and politically represented classes possible, which we can summarize as white and cisgender;

·      A fervent belief that the purpose of child-rearing is, in short, the reproduction of one’s self in miniature;

·      An understanding of the biology of sex, the combinatorial range of human chromosomes, phenotype, developmental mammalian biology, the human endocrine system, human reproduction, and human sexuality that fail to progress beyond an eighth grade textbook level;

·      A willing disposition to being led, which is to say a fascistic heart that hungers for the power of a strong leader or ideal that can bring order to the internal disorder of the self;

·      And a strong, ineradicable belief that the mission of modern, progressive women, sometimes called Feminism, is the ever more iron-gripped control of those less powerful.

Although this gender ideological affliction can strike members of all sexes, it has been observed to be most prevalent amongst certain white women, to whom you therefore should pay especial attention. These gender critical white women, who are often the legal guardians of children themselves, are likely to be also radicalized around an array of issues otherwise unconnected (indeed, in their deficient state, many cannot recognize that they are in league with such contemptuous allies): anti-vaxxers, COVID deniers, anti-maskers, anti-immigrant groups, anti-Semites, Islamophobes, and white supremacist and neofascist political movements, including their militia and online conspiracy theory organs that have incited violence in the nation’s Capitol of late. 

It is an enormously embarrassing and thoroughly repugnant motley crew.

As you have no doubt been made aware, the bread and butter of such groups is the internet, namely social media websites like Twitter, YouTube, and darker regions to which they have been driven after bans on Reddit and other sites for violations of terms of service. (As an aside, one particular confusion that sets in and muddies the cognition of such adult failures is a delirium about what constitutes free speech. They are frequently under the mistaken impression, wild as it may seem to the calm, judicious reader, that private internet companies are public agoras and that, even stranger, the existence of other human beings can be reduced to a matter of their unobstructed speech. Several have developed the unfortunate comorbidity of a terrible delusion for which there are precious few cures to date, which consists of using extremely high profile platforms and publications to declare that they have been censored, or Cancelled as they put it, when of course the preponderance of evidence and the very means of delivery of the accusation testifies to the exact contrary.)

The signature style of the burdensome gender critical adult languishing in their confused state is an adherence to a strict world of rare and unknown hypothetical situations, along with impossibly thick and unlikely logic puzzles. Perhaps you have been greeted by several of these in your excursions upon the internet. We can find here, among other things: excessively semantic debates over the definition of words like woman, or sex, or chromosome; strange imaginings about unfair advantages in sport, or sexual predation in bathrooms, which have never been observed to have occurred in the real world; a set of grave concerns about the hypothetical futures of children as regards their sexual appetites; and any number of doomsday predictions about the withering away of society through the collapse of womanhood under the immense strain of something called, with apparently no irony intended, “cultural Marxism.” 

Perhaps most sadly of all, it is this set of strange metaphysical claims about the immanent collapse of societal hierarchies that betrays the gender criticals true condition. Every speech of theirs is, in fact, a confession that they wield immense power in the confrontation, which they should like to preserve at all costs. It is in fact they who have legal guardianship over their trans children. And it is in fact they who have fallen victim to an inconsistent, politically dangerous social contagion that has aligned them with violent forces who disregard human life and clamor for a dictator or a strong man—though, perhaps in this case, they would clamor for a strong woman, perhaps an author from Scotland—to install order and punish the wicked. It is here that perhaps my plea about their pitiable condition must be amended. These poor souls are, ironically, the richest among us. 

Oh, won’t someone think of these adults!

I have recently come into possession of a mysterious manuscript, sent to me anonymously by post, and written by one “T.S. Swift.” This author, it would seem, has penned a Swiftian modest proposal to dispatch with the gender criticals, one that I relay with great urgency and endorsement. I should note that, as a matter of verification, I consulted with the preeminent expert on such peculiar eighteenth century manuscripts, one Doctor R. Voth, of Jack Sheppardian fame, who has confirmed what I already suspected: that this document was not written in the eighteenth century, or at least, not precisely. It seems that a collective of anonymous editors who operate under the designation “T.S.”—one must not help but smile at the obvious connotation—most likely edited an eighteenth century copy of Jonathan Swift’s original modest proposal, to make it actionable by those of us who, like me, have become gravely concerned about the burden of gender critical adults on our children and society. 

TS Swift’s recommendations therein are as lengthy as their penchant for digressive discourse; in the interests of sparing you an encounter with centuries-old language no doubt forged by highly erudite hands, I will quote the most relevant passage:

“Finding that these indigent Adults, by abdication of their appointed roles as caregivers, transmitters of reason, and duly enjoined guardians of Children of all Genders, have fallen prey to a lascivious and libelous gender critical ideology, rendering their social value quite Null and endangering others through its continued transmission, I can think of no one objection that will possibly be raised by my proposal to strip them of their Titles and place them under the guardianship of their Trans Children, until such a time that they may be reformed and reeduckated to fulfill their most solemn and sacred duty to the publick good.”

Swift’s proposal is, I believe, delivered of a deep and incomparable compassion for such miserable suckers as these, who we could, of course, much more easily toss out for their failure to fulfill the duties accorded to adults. However, given that they had been at risk all these years under the spell of those white supremacies, resentful identity politics, and reactionary political movements seeking a great consolidation of power in those already exercising a great deal, I agree that we must take a more sympathetic approach. We are charitable people, after all.

Therefore, in relaying this remarkable manuscript to you—which, I assure you, I will continue to study—I urge you to do your part in advancing this proposal. Dear reader, call upon your white and cisgender neighbors, family members, coworkers, public officials, and social media influencers. If you know Glenn Greenwald, beseech him! Ask of them that they would, out of the deep goodness and truth of their hearts, take responsibility for their errant flock, their dead weight, and their terrible burdens on the rest of us. It is time to end this ghastly affliction that threatens us all with its delusion and regression. 

Hear this, you who are white and cisgender: Reform your people! Take responsibility for their foibles! And clean your house! Think of your poor, suffering adults. Put them out of their miserable condition and under the charge of their trans children until they might learn what it means to be placed in the hands of someone far mightier than you, without any recourse, and then be asked to find a way to survive.

—Dr. Jules Gill-Peterson, Female Scientist