Life hits us all hard, but especially young women
Last weekend I caught up with a female friend, Anna*, from the US, whom I hadn’t seen in many years. We had a nice, long chat. I asked her how her daughter Nicola is. “She’s well,” she told me. “She’s now living with her girlfriend in another part of town.”
This was a surprise. I last saw Nicola ten years ago when she was twelve years old. She was a sweet, shy, pretty girl who looked much like her mother did at that age. It is difficult for me to envisage that she is now a woman, let alone a lesbian.
I did a little probing. Anna told me that Nicola had previously dated a boy for around three years, but it was rocky and ended acrimoniously. Before that she had been terribly affected by lockdowns (or ‘crimes against humanity’ as I prefer to call them); she spiralled into depression and became increasingly anxious.
She was unsure of the course her life should take. She applied for and then lost interest in university courses; she flirted with several different careers, jettisoning many in their early stages.
Then she met a woman she took a shine to. They moved in together. Nicola left her parents’ house and began her new life.
“Has she changed her physical appearance?” I asked. “Yes,” Anna replied. “She’s cut her hair short. She’s started going to the gym to bulk up. She’s joined the town’s LGBT community.”
And one other thing: “She’s changed her name. She now wants to be called ‘Morgan’.”
It was a lot for me to take in. I didn’t say much in rebuttal at the time but now I’ve had time to reflect. First, the name change. This strikes me as, at the very least, ungrateful. It’s the child distancing themselves from the parent. Granted, Zowie Bowie, now calling himself Duncan Jones, had a good case for changing his name, but this seems to me less pleasing – and likely driven by ideology. It’s somewhat authoritarian; the child would be full of righteous anger if their new name wasn’t used.
As for changing her appearance: it saddens me. Nicola was all set to be a beautiful, feminine woman desired by the opposite sex. Now she is deliberately suppressing and subverting her nature.
She has been funnelled into the ‘LGBT community’ – not actually a proper community but nevertheless a collection of friends and acquaintances that will largely consist of lesbians. I have nothing against lesbians. But it will mean that most of Nicola’s everyday activities will be enacted through a narrow filter; it will be difficult for her to escape the lifestyle.
Here’s what part of me wanted to yell when Anna told me all this: by the age of 40, is there not the chance that Nicola will be a bitter, childless lesbian trapped forever by the lifestyle choices she made when she was immature and insecure? She could be deeply unhappy about where she ends up. Anna believes her daughter is probably bisexual (remember the three-year boyfriend). At the risk of sounding like an Alan Partridge/Woodrow Wyatt hybrid: if someone is bisexual then surely they should go with the heterosexual option?
There are sensible reasons for that. It is better for the individual, for the community, for wider society. The nuclear family is the bedrock of Western civilisation. Having children is the most enriching thing that can happen to a woman in her life. Of course I have to do my disclaimers – some women genuinely do not want children; many homosexuals are genuinely happy; many ‘nuclear’ families can be chaotic and dismal – but masses of data points to the rich value of marrying a person of the opposite sex and having children with them, and bringing them up together.
I know that Nicola will have been subject to many years of messaging that ‘alternative’ sexual lifestyles are fine, even preferable. Her school will have pushed this incessantly. Neo-Marxists have long wanted to destroy the West, and now they are doing so, in part through sexual identity propaganda. Yes, there are myriad reasons for the global collapse in fertility rates, but it’s likely that one of them is that youth who would not previously have entertained same-sex partnerships now do so.
Nicola’s journey is not an unusual one nowadays. A female work colleague told me about her two daughters: one is 24 years old and now living with her Swedish girlfriend in the family house; the younger one is 18 and tried to kill herself last month because she is so depressed and anxious. Her mother saved her life with the use of a defibrillator. She says both her daughters have ADHD and are on the autistic spectrum.
In my new job I recently visited a house, which included a teenage girl, and I noticed she had self-harm marks on her body.
When I speak to friends my age, I’m surprised when they tell me that their daughter isn’t autistic and/or ‘identifying’ as a lesbian! Mention of troubled sons pops up less often, but isn’t unknown. Another colleague told me how her husband’s son from a previous marriage rarely leaves the house but did so on his recent 18th birthday when his father took him to get the nose ring he wanted.
Why is Generation Alpha so messed up? Perhaps because our political and media Establishment tell them the climate will kill them. That a coronavirus imperilled them. That boys can be girls and girls can be boys. That they should feel guilty for feeling uncomfortable having more people who aren’t the same race as them in their communities. The internet and smartphones. Lots of reasons.
Also that they should completely give in to darker desires, and they should channel their same-sex friendships in a carnal way, and they should switch to a life path that may not be in their long-term interest. Nicola is just one girl, but she is representative of many under enormous pressure in the early 21st century.
*All names have been changed, and some details altered, but everything important here is true.
Russell David is the author of the Mad World Substack.
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Or perhaps Nicola is just weak and/or mentally ill and if it wasn’t ‘this’ (butch lesbianism) she got involved in it would be ‘that’ (insert fad name here). I say this quite callously as I don’t know any of the people involved, but simply as an observer of the seemingly growing need and incidence of no one wanting to be simply normal or at least at ease with themselves and their circumstances. Life is not a blame game, but it is rapidly becoming one.
basically ‘normal’ is doomed to be a tiny fraction of the modern demographic. . . . . . . .
Thank you, Russell David for this sensitive article about a subject which has touched so many families. It can be heartbreaking when such an “outing” occurs, all the more so because to object, even mildly, to the LGBTQ+ lifestyle is to risk total alienation from certain family members and friends, who prefer to simply go along to get along. The “relationship” with the “outed” family member is more important than anything else.
You ask, “Why is Generation Alpha so messed up?” and since I have a reputation for being a bit of a God-botherer-cum-preacher, I’m going to quote somebody else who turned out to be so, after suffering in the Russian Gulags. Here’s what Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn had to say about what caused all the suffering wrought by the Russian Revolution, and later in this same speech, what causes the decline of morality in the west: it seems to me to fit here, if not at first glance…
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said: “More than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.”
Since then I have spent well-nigh 50 years working on the history of our Revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.”
(‘Men Have Forgotten God’: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s 1983 Templeton Address).
We’ll have to return to God – or things will only worsen.
Thanks again, Russell, for a thoughtful article on a very difficult subject.
It’s all too easy to say ‘return to God’, when, if ever, were we actually with God? Were things better? It’s too simple a diagnosis of what’s currently wrong and only a possible solution. I respect your view but can’t say I agree with it.
Well, one of the early Christian saints (Irenaeus – an early bishop) said: “Truth is always simple – it is error that is immense.” Personally, I think he’s onto something there.
The question which Russell posed: “Why is Generation Alpha so messed up? is applicable, also, to several previous generations and this moral and spiritual decline, especially in the west, was addressed by the Russian dissident whom I quoted above – perhaps the following quote from that same commentator will clarify, a little, your question “when, if ever, were we actually with God? Were things better?”
On 19th June, 1978, TIME Magazine published the text of a talk entitled: “World: Solzhenitsyn: Decline of the West”, in which the exiled Russian Novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn discussed the roots of the decline of western civilisation:
“How did the West decline from its triumphal march to its present sickness? The mistake must be at the root, at the very basis of human thinking in the past centuries. [An erroneous world view] became the basis for government and social science, and could be defined as rationalistic humanism or humanistic autonomy: the proclaimed and enforced autonomy of man from any higher force above him. It based modern Western civilization on the dangerous need to worship man and his material needs. However, in early democracies, as in American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted because man is God’s creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. Subsequently, however, all such limitations were discarded everywhere in the West: a total liberation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. The West ended up by truly enforcing human rights, sometimes even excessively, but man’s sense of responsibility to God and society grew dimmer and dimmer.”
What makes Alexander Solzhenitsyn an interesting source on the subject of the messed up generations of recent years, is the fact that he went, himself, from religious belief (Orthodoxy) to Marxism/atheism and then – recognising that the decline of western values coincided with the decline in religious belief and practice – converted to Christianity.
I’m not sure that anything above will convince you, Nathaniel, that it is the rejection of God that has led to the manifest decline, morally and spiritually, in western societies but I can’t see any other explanation. If you can, I’d love to read them.
Having said that, I’m heading off for a week’s holiday in Greece (Crete) tomorrow but I’ll search for this thread on my return – I’m planning NOT to check out the internet this week, if at all possible – so if you have your own ideas about whether there really is a moral and spiritual decline in the west, and if so, what has caused it, please say the word.
In my opinion, the decline is due to two more simple things than rejection of God:
1 Entitlement – people now firmly believe that certain things are theirs by right without either working for them or payment (except by others).
2 A more understanding and less condemnatory attitude to things that our recent ancestors would be appalled by has quickly been supplemented by promoting things as fashionable or desirable to those who are far too easily led.
3 The replacement of morality based on Christianity with new age alternatives which promote self hatred.
‘Nicola was all set to be a beautiful, feminine woman desired by the opposite sex. Now she is deliberately suppressing and subverting her nature’. How can you know whether or not Nicola was ‘deliberately suppressing and subverting her nature’ when she had the relationship with the boy, and that was why it didn’t work? Is it remotely possible for the male ego to consider that she may not want to be ‘desired by the opposite sex’? Why has that got to be the only and ultimate goal?
‘by the age of 40, is there not the chance that Nicola will be a bitter, childless lesbian’ – on the other hand, she may be perfectly happy with her lifestyle choice, if only people like the author would stop preaching to her. That’s pretty offensive to lesbians, and actually, none of your business.
‘Having children is the most enriching thing that can happen to a woman in her life’. You are not a woman, how can you possibly know? Just because other people say so? How about those women, worn out by yearly pregnancies by the age of 35, in the ‘good old days’ before birth control became, if not exactly the norm, at least possible? Is there any man who would like to try the stuff that happens after the fun bit? I think not. Think of the Magdalen Laundries – really enriching for those girls.
I absolutely loathe the judgemental and sanctimonious tone of this article, and of course the dragging in of religion and ‘it’s all the fault of people moving away from God’, that Gen Alpha have been told that it’s OK to ‘completely give in to darker desires, and they should channel their same-sex friendships in a carnal way’. I don’t get it myself, I have to say, but ‘same sex friendships’ are not what genuinely gay people would call it. I don’t get it because I’m not gay, but as long as they don’t harm others or themselves, it’s their choice, and not my place to judge or preach.
It’s not so very long ago that homosexuality was illegal, and good, indeed genius people like Alan Turing who did so much for his country, was driven to suicide at the age of 41.
For the record, I am not a lesbian, am married with no children, a decision I have never regretted. Everybody is entitled to their opinion, but a generalised view of ‘one size fits all’ – ie gayness bad and stupid (‘they know not what they do and should turn back to God’) – straight and married with children good, indeed the only way, is not necessarily agreed by all.
Wow. I thought your misrepresentation of my last article on the World Cup was appalling – this is beyond belief.
You actually include in your comment on my article a comment from another poster and attribute it to me, as if it’s a part of the article. More than once actually.
Besides this, you utterly misunderstand the tone of the article AGAIN.
Will you apologise? I doubt it.
You are without doubt the most egregious commenter on my articles I have EVER encountered.
All the things you criticise I address in the article. You are incapable of understanding nuance.
You either deliberately misunderstand everything or you’re too stupid to understand the words you actually read.
You sicken me, you’re a disgrace to this website.
“I absolutely loathe the judgemental and sanctimonious tone of this article, and of course the dragging in of religion and ‘it’s all the fault of people moving away from God’”
Find me the sentence of the article that ‘drags religion in’. Go on, find it now. Tell me which one it is.
I’m waiting.
And the tone is the OPPOSITE of ‘judgemental and sanctimonious’, it is sensitive, as another commenter says.
You are so blind and ignorant it is untrue. You say it says gayness is bad. What is actually written is ‘I have nothing against lesbians’.
Wow, you’re the pits.