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Americas Founder's famously rebelled against the British in defense of their rights to, as they put it, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." These sound like totally commonsensical and straightforward desires; who could oppose any of them?
In reality, America and the rest of the world have constantly been riven with strife over exactly what those valuable rights mean, and which right ranks higher than what else. The reason American politics has become so divisive is because Americans themselves hold profoundly different and conflicting worldviews centered on rules of behavior, public and private rights, and what each person should receive in what circumstances, as we've been exploring in this series. The progressive wing of the Democratic party holds utterly nonsensical views so strongly that they viciously attempt to destroy anyone who disagrees with them - even, or especially, when their beliefs are undermining the most fundamental of rights.
Of course, American leftists are hardly alone in this worldwide quest of senseless destruction. To find a stark example of how "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" can be almost ludicrously self-contradictory and internally inconsistent, you will find no better example than the recent news from Germany that, in order for an individual to legally commit suicide in the guise of euthanasia, they must first be vaccinated against catching covid.
What is any sane person to make of this self-beclowning rule? Presumably Germans who sincerely wish to die are pursuing their own happiness by ending their life and are demanding the liberty to do so. But, if they have the right to end their own life, how can it not also logically follow that they must have the right to choose not to protect themselves from a disease that at worst may kill them - which is what they're trying to do on their own accord anyway?
Euthanasia is designed to be mercifully quick, whereas covid is hardly instantaneous - how is any disease supposed to kill them once they're already dead at their own hand, or at the hand of the assisting physician at their euthanasia clinic?
Furthermore, what possible difference could it make whether they're
vaccinated or
not? The whole point of a vaccine is to protect the vaccinated
individual from catching, or at least from succumbing, to a disease
carried by someone else. The death-wishing person couldn't care
less; the attending physician is, of course, long since already
vaccinated and thus at no risk. Or, could it be that the Germans
are suggesting that the
much-vaunted and legally-required vaccines don't actually work?
Only in a society that is so rule-bound as to be incapable of thinking about what they're actually doing could something this preposterous even be expressed with a straight face, much less endowed with the force of law and enforced by grim-faced gun-toting officers of the State. Yet, in Germany, this conflict between two fundamental rights is depressingly real.
You may laugh - but right here in these United States, our elites and institutions are unanimously pushing something no less absurd on its face, namely, the fantastical contrivance that the infinite variety of the human condition offers more than exactly two easily-distinguishable, scientifically determined, and immutable genders a.k.a. sexes, commonly referred to as "men" or "women," "boys" or "girls."
By making that statement, we have ensured that this article will never appear on any social media or other Internet venue beyond the website it is published on. For you are no longer even allowed to hold, much less express, this statement of fact amply proved by science, history, observation, and culture, and believed by literally everyone in all of human history until not even ten years ago.
The modern leftist tyrants that currently hold sway throughout the Western world demand that certain transparently false assumptions cannot so much as be questioned:
One such assumption is that sex and gender are matters of individual experience and assessment rather than the observable result of an unchangeable combination of sex chromosomes. Another is that the exuberant extremes of transgender activists demand a lexicon of novel terms, e.g., "menstruating men," that serve only to signal the adoption of transgender sympathies, rather than provide a basis for reasoned discussion. At the other end of the spectrum are those that believe that transgenderism is a mental illness and nothing else...
There is an obvious inconsistency in the assumptions that underlie much transgender advocacy and that is that the phenomenon of transgenderism has a homogeneous mechanism. Prudent skepticism would caution against believing that the existence of multiple genders has a single cause. The claim that there are many different types of gender identities would naturally suggest many different reasons for such claims, as well as many different consequences and methods of addressing them. The most vociferous transgender advocates treat all transgender claims as being unquestionable and that any examination of such claims is motivated by bigotry, hatred, or "transphobia." This argument does not withstand scrutiny.
Activists are serious about "menstruating men." "Tampons in Men's Rooms? It's Just a Small Part of 'Menstrual Equity,' Campus Activists Say" tells us:
Over the past year, several colleges have improved access to menstrual products on their campuses, including in some men's and gender-neutral restrooms. That last detail has prompted some conservative websites to take note.
The American Conservative mockingly headlined its report "Social Justice Washrooms," from "tomorrow's generation of American elites." Comments on Breitbart's report` on the trend called it "academic insanity," pointing out that "men do not menstruate."
But campus leaders say stocking all bathrooms with such products is a relatively easy way to make sure no one is left out.
Menstrual equity? Any relation to "menstrual inclusion" or to
"menstrual diversity?" Is there any underlying truth or meaning
to such "word salad" flummery?
Regular readers of this magazine will not be surprised to find that your humble correspondent holds to the view that, as the first writer put it, "transgenderism is a mental illness and nothing else." In fact we'd put it more bluntly, and state that there is literally no such thing as transgenderism, any more than there is any genuine reality or relevance to a person in a mental asylum who believes himself to be Teddy Roosevelt, Napoleon, or Jesus Christ. Their views are so demonstrably contrary to reality that they deserve not a moment's serious consideration, except with a mind toward a cure.
Alas, as with other delusions, to their holders they are very real; our wish for those suffering from such mental illnesses is that they would receive appropriate care and treatment so as to enable their troubled minds to reconnect with observable truth and reality. Unfortunately, our modern left is going so far as to make such treatment actually illegal, and has attempted to ban the non-mentally-ill from stating simple home truths.
The plain fact is that there are, only ever have been, and only ever will be, precisely two genders in humankind, easily identifiable in 99.99% of cases either by an external glance or by a quick examination between the legs, and still identifiable in the remaining .01% of the severely handicapped or mutated by means of a straightforward and well-understood genetic test. People may wish to be many things that they are not; the rest of us are under no obligation to treat their delusions or dreams as if they were real.
The problem is, in many ways modern leftism deals in forcing their dreams to be a universal reality by force of law or force of riots regardless of the harm done by bulldozing through such delusions. This causes vast damage to real people - including those suffering from gender dystrophia who are being induced to mistakenly refer to themselves as being transgendered.
Are there people who, while scientifically, observably, and in true reality male (or female), nevertheless suffer under the false delusion that they are, or should be, female (or male)? Of course there are. It violates no law for them to dress up in the clothing associated with the opposite gender, any more than it's illegal for someone to dress up as Teddy Roosevelt, Napoleon, or Jesus Christ.
Sex goes a bit deeper than clothes, though, and it's not physically possible for someone to perform surgery on themselves, no matter how much they may desire to. It requires the cooperation of a doctor at least, and likely a whole medical team backed up by a hospital. Such an operation can't be done on a whim - it has to be scheduled and, more importantly, it cannot be reversed.
This matters, because even many secular researchees who devoutly hold to the leftist shibboleth that sex and gender are matters of individual experience, still are worried that our current culture is far too enthusiastic about pushing impressionable young people into irreversible changes that cause permanent harm:
Protocols for gender transition will likely ruin a person's ability to respond to sexual intimacy and in many instances produce sterility. Those are steep prices to pay...
When physical puberty is inhibited, there is not enough penile and scrotal skin for a surgeon to re-fashion female organs without taking stomach lining or even part of the colon from a patient.
Put another way: When children are persuaded that they're the wrong gender and either surgical or pharmaceutical medical interventions are applied, they usually end up being functionally no gender at all - incapable of having a fulfilling sexual experience as either sex. This isn't a wholly modern idea - the castrati of the Renaissance sacrificed their genitalia for musical glory - but forcing such sacrifices on anyone, particularly the underage who generally are considered not to be sufficiently mature to make such permanently life-altering decisions, is looked down upon with horror and pity by the sane.
Yet, not only does the modern left trumpet the glories of such extreme surgical mutilations, it exerts both legal and social force to obstruct any public disagreement! They have granted themselves free reign to persuade children and their parents to do this great harm, yet so great is the force of cancel culture on this matter that it's difficult even for the most qualified medical personnel to get counter-arguments published:
Erica Anderson, a clinical psychologist at the University of California San Francisco's Child and Adolescent Gender Clinic...submitted a co-authored op-ed to The New York Times warning that many transgender medical providers were treating kids recklessly. The Times declined to publish, citing this was "outside our coverage priorities right now."
In our nation and Western culture today, we see a full spread-spectrum propaganda push to persuade everyone of something that is manifestly false, even in situations where sexuality doesn't really belong at all.
For example, in most large corporations, HR directives tend to prioritize LGBTQWTF sensibilities -- such as allowing employees to choose which bathrooms to use irrespective of their biological sex. That in itself can create an insidiously hostile work environment.
When your humble correspondent's erstwhile employer created gender-neutral bathrooms (complete with dispensers that bump into one's knee in the "men's" room) there was absolute uproar among employees. In taking this unilateral action, HR was elevating the "rights" of a tiny minority over the general will, and at quite a cost - among other things, they no longer have the benefit of the wisdom and expertise now freely available to you in this publication.
But aside from that appalling consequence, consider the confusion wrought by transgender imperatives that conflict with sexual harassment policies that forbid unwanted peering and peeping and which undermine employees' sense of well-being in this most private sanctuary! Again, it's an internal contradiction and a recipe for interminable lawsuits and conflict, that the giant organization run by your (presumably) betters suckered themselves into.
My employer's internal blog was overwhelmed with angry statements from usually compliant employees who otherwise operate according to a very liberal ethos. Several employees hastened their retirement, some others requested a layoff, and a few hardy souls waited for the inevitable downsizing buyout opportunity to leave at their employer's expense. The prevailing sentiment was that women don't want men in the women's bathroom - and vice versa, something which anyone with eyes, ears, and a pulse should already be intimately aware of.
In that instance, HR, while pretending to "be an employer of choice," instead fostered a universally hostile work environment in deference to PC. They foisted upon everyone a hastily conjured transgender policy encouraging employees to use any bathroom -- irrespective of nature. Irrespective of their biological sex. Even our docile workforce of quasi-governmental employees rebelled; after all, they are accustomed to zero-tolerance directives that promote an "if I feel it, it must be true" sense of victimhood and they rightly felt victimized by their HR overlords.
Lifelong Democrat Kara Dansky, author of The Abolition of Sex: How the 'Transgender' Agenda Harms Women and Girls, asks:
How many women .have to be subjected to men walking around [excited] in bathrooms and spas before our society comes to grips with the reality of what is going on?
That reality is that we are either female or male - it really is binary, so arguing with nature will only lead to cognitive dissonance.
One of our readers was amused to note that the facilitator at an MIT breakout session listed her pronouns as (she, her). "That wasn't necessary," he told us. "Her contours would have immediately gotten her on the radar of every single one of my high-testosterone classmates. Has MIT become so confused about the difference between men and women that even visually- [if not surgically-] enhanced women need to declare their pronouns? My classmates could tell the difference - the male visual cortex has special circuits for recognizing female contour. Has that changed?"
Ultimately, as every evolutionary biologist will tell you, sex is life - and the death cult of the left is promoting policies that prevent their victims from participating in that most fundamental of human acts. How sad! How inhuman! How un-American! How... evil.
At least children who have been disfigured and brainwashed by evil leftist perverts are still alive though, and have a chance to make the best of what's left of their life that they can. And, as with every other evil invented by human depravity, this one too will come to an end - indeed, perhaps it already is.
This chance doesn't exist for countless tens of millions of other even more dire victims of leftists' murderous psychopathy - or, as they prefer to delicately put it, "the right to choose," which we'll briefly explore in the next article in this series.