In which the pond realises that tomboy is code for a Devine understanding of the world ...

That splash by Claire Harvey reminded the pond it had overlooked the five hundredth anniversary of Martin Luther dissing the pope and his whore of Babylon church ...

Not that the angry Sydney Anglicans would care that much as their Newtown tower of Babel nears completion.

After all, they're not Lutherans,  and they only have a church because a monarch wanted an heir and fucked anyone who looked like a breeder (and fucked them good and proper if they were not).

In turn, this reminded the pond that Luther himself turned into one of the great hate speakers with his 1543 work Concerning the Jews and Their Lies ...

It's easy enough to find translations of this on the full to overflowing intertubes, and stories about it, as in Addressing a dark legacy: Martin Luther and the Jews, and the way the Norwegian Lutherans finally decided that perhaps, 500 years on, it was time to say enough was enough - Norwegian church denounces Luther's anti-Jewish writings - but before any Catholics decide to get uppity, it's worth remembering that generations of popes were full Lutheran on the question of the Jews ...

But now that belated mention is out of the way, it's time to get on with modern delusional hate speakers, and who better for the job than Miranda the Devine, promoter of solutions for incontinence ...

Yes, that sort of ironic juxtaposition is what keeps the pond awake at night in a post-ironic, post-modern world ...

It's all the more disturbing that the Devine should reveal that she was a bookworm - so reading isn't the pathway to becoming a mature adult after all, you can just as easily become a bigoted scribbler for the Terror?

Who knew, and the pond, itself a bookworm as a child, suddenly realised why reading all the library fodder in the Tamworth library had led to a sense of futility rather than awareness...

As for the news that the Devine was infatuated by literary tomboys? Naturally the pond was compelled and had to read on ...

Where to start?

Well with the obvious elephant in the room. In the pond's day, "tomboy" was actually code for lesbian. None dared speak its name, none could mention it, because of course there were absolutely no lesbians in Tamworth. Guaranteed fact.

There were perhaps a few gay men, but a good bashing usually sorted them out.

The pond recently swore it never linked to the Daily UK Snail, a low rent publication of the basest kind, but please, allow the pond to do a Donald, and walk that back, at least to the extent of running a couple of Snail headlines, just for the irony factor ...

Now the pond doesn't mind if the Devine prefers to identify as a slut or a lesbian, but back in the day, if there were tomboy tendencies, it was a sure sign that attention must be paid, and if the worst came to the worst, the tomboy might need to be assigned a little electroshock therapy in the hope of sorting the tomboy out ... before the sweet young thing turned into, gasp, a lesbian ... while boys with a tendency to dolls and frocks certainly needed a good thrashing.

After all, the last thing the world needed was this sort of role model ...

The pond has absolutely no knowledge of the world where - according to the Devine - it was serenely accepted that girls could be dykes and boys could be faggots, and never an abusive word or term would be used to address and demean them ...

Remember? This is what she just wrote ...

Until very recently, society serenely accepted that some girls were tomboys who liked to climb trees and some boys were dreamy souls who liked dressing up.

Serenity? Is that another word for the Devine screeching about how gay marriage is going to destroy western civilisation?

Never mind, we must now move on to the demonisation of fresh fears and phobias, and naturally the trans area is a shoo-in:

Now the pond should declare an intimate interest here.

The pond has a number of trans friends, and any of them have horror stories about growing up, and the lack of understanding and comprehension, and even worse, their treatment by an uncomprehending, and hostile bunch of experts - because one thing's certain.

If growing up and showing "alarming tendencies", trans children are forced to break the pond's scientological principle of never having anything to do with shrinks and psychologists, experts in the art of mind fucking. They are fodder for the system, and the system is rarely kind.

One of the pond's dearest friends happened to grow up in a Catholic family, and endured all the usual stuff - electroshock, mental institutions, bullying at school, bullying at home, therapists whose main form of therapy was the cultivation of self-hate, fear and loathing - but thankfully she survived, and possibly emerged even stronger in herself for the transitioning experience ... though the pond wouldn't recommend it to anyone but the bravest and the strongest ... though it helps if you know who you are and how you feel and think ...

As usual, there's always more to a Devine story than what the Devine will write or acknowledge, but the pond likes to be free in its links and so it's off to Toronto to the Globe and Mail for Gender identity debate swirls over CAMH psychologist, transgender program.

Is there an irony in that link, because the pond always loves its ironies?

Yes, that'll do nicely ... especially coming so soon after ....

Until very recently, society serenely accepted that some girls were tomboys who liked to climb trees and some boys were dreamy souls who liked dressing up.

So much for Serenity - and for movies going by that name too ... (and an NPR story about Zucker can be found here, and just to balance the books, an extended piece about the controversy which upset both sides of the debate is here).

Now there's one thing that's certain. As soon as personal journeys are taken up by the likes of the Devine and Quadrant, and zealous, ideological doctors motivated by their own personal convictions rather than by the needs and desires of their patients, things will get complicated, and people are likely to get hurt ...

You can see it in the Devine when she wraps things up by talking of "madness" - because suddenly we've moved from serenity to "frightening" cheer-leading "madness" ... as if somehow being transgender was a cause, as opposed to something that is deeply personal and needs deeply personal consideration and empathy...

But of course this is nonsense. The Devine in her piece routinely imitated god, conflated and confused, and got simple things wrong, seemingly unable to understand even simple issues, and while calling for rationality, routinely used emotive, hysterical fear-mongering language ... 

Well you could hardly call "frightening" and "madness" a form of rational discourse ...

And the notion of "let nature take its course" is an absurdity, given the way that the shrieking Devine, doctors, schools, peers, teachers, other adults, friends and relatives are a conflicting, confusing mass of tendencies designed to guarantee that there's no smooth path for a trans child, or even for a pantheist nature wanting to take its course ...

Let's see how it ended up in the comments section, as people responded to the Devine's "rational approach" ...

WTF? Marxism and Nazis?

Sorry trans folk, you've just been Devined ... wear the scent with pride to your next Doris Day party. 

And now, just in case the Devine happens to stumble into the pond, here's a song for her ... the biggest windy noise in mighty purty Sydney ...