"Alberta Gives New Birth Certificate To 12-Year-Old Boy Who was Born A Girl"
link
Gosh, it's like a kind of madness sweeping the continent.
Here's the headline:
"Alberta Gives New Birth Certificate To 12-Year-Old Boy Who was Born A Girl"
Here's the fact:
Alberta gave a new birth certificate to a 12-year-old girl who wishes that she had been born a boy.
Look, I don't want to make this person's life any harder. But I think something really, really creepy and important is going on here.
Roughly:
We're being asked to believe that a bunch of patently false things about biological sex.
More accurately:
A bunch of patently false things about biological sex are suddenly being declared true, and we are all being told to go along with them, on pain of being (falsely) accused of bigotry.
Even more accurately, and even more creepily:
A bunch of patently false things about biological sex are being asserted and/or presupposed; we are not even being told that we must go along with them. Rather, without discussion, it is suddenly simply being presupposed that we all will go along with the falsehoods, on pain of being (falsely) accused of bigotry.
The falsehoods about sex are one thing. I mean, false things get said about all sorts of things all the time. So, in one sense, it's not like this is some astonishing thing.
The really, really creepy and alarming part, however, is the imposition of these falsehoods as a kind of orthodoxy. Worse: an orthodoxy that one is prohibited from questioning, and which is exempted from any requirement that it be supported by reasons.
Soooo....here's a view. It's almost certainly false, and the preponderance of reasons is against it. We're not going to discuss it, however, because to discuss it is to suggest that it can be rational to question it. But only a bigot could even think that it might be false. So obviously discussion would be out of bounds. You will simply accept it. Case closed...
To see people knuckling under to this kind of thing is alarming in the extreme.
I simply can't get over how damn creepy it is to see so many people falling all over themselves to accept and enforce this...whatever it is...instant orthodoxy or whatever...
I don't think your biological sex should have any implications for how you act and live your life. (I mean...other than the unavoidable ones. If you're a dude, you best not hope to be a mother... And so on...) Kaufman would rather live life as males have traditionally done? More power to you, my friend. Live as you like. It's no one's business but yours.
But that does not mean that you become male (or female) simply by feeling male (or female). "Feeling male" no more makes you a male than feeling Japanese makes you Japanese, nor feeling six feet tall makes you six feet tall.
Incidentally, it's apparently not entirely uncontroversial that we should even be allowed to say that Kaufman was born a girl. Piers Morgan, as you might recall, was declared "transphobic" for saying that Janet Mock was born a boy. The new orthodoxy decreed that even saying that was verboten...
Sooo....what am I missing here?
Gosh, it's like a kind of madness sweeping the continent.
Here's the headline:
"Alberta Gives New Birth Certificate To 12-Year-Old Boy Who was Born A Girl"
Here's the fact:
Alberta gave a new birth certificate to a 12-year-old girl who wishes that she had been born a boy.
Look, I don't want to make this person's life any harder. But I think something really, really creepy and important is going on here.
Roughly:
We're being asked to believe that a bunch of patently false things about biological sex.
More accurately:
A bunch of patently false things about biological sex are suddenly being declared true, and we are all being told to go along with them, on pain of being (falsely) accused of bigotry.
Even more accurately, and even more creepily:
A bunch of patently false things about biological sex are being asserted and/or presupposed; we are not even being told that we must go along with them. Rather, without discussion, it is suddenly simply being presupposed that we all will go along with the falsehoods, on pain of being (falsely) accused of bigotry.
The falsehoods about sex are one thing. I mean, false things get said about all sorts of things all the time. So, in one sense, it's not like this is some astonishing thing.
The really, really creepy and alarming part, however, is the imposition of these falsehoods as a kind of orthodoxy. Worse: an orthodoxy that one is prohibited from questioning, and which is exempted from any requirement that it be supported by reasons.
Soooo....here's a view. It's almost certainly false, and the preponderance of reasons is against it. We're not going to discuss it, however, because to discuss it is to suggest that it can be rational to question it. But only a bigot could even think that it might be false. So obviously discussion would be out of bounds. You will simply accept it. Case closed...
To see people knuckling under to this kind of thing is alarming in the extreme.
I simply can't get over how damn creepy it is to see so many people falling all over themselves to accept and enforce this...whatever it is...instant orthodoxy or whatever...
I don't think your biological sex should have any implications for how you act and live your life. (I mean...other than the unavoidable ones. If you're a dude, you best not hope to be a mother... And so on...) Kaufman would rather live life as males have traditionally done? More power to you, my friend. Live as you like. It's no one's business but yours.
But that does not mean that you become male (or female) simply by feeling male (or female). "Feeling male" no more makes you a male than feeling Japanese makes you Japanese, nor feeling six feet tall makes you six feet tall.
Incidentally, it's apparently not entirely uncontroversial that we should even be allowed to say that Kaufman was born a girl. Piers Morgan, as you might recall, was declared "transphobic" for saying that Janet Mock was born a boy. The new orthodoxy decreed that even saying that was verboten...
Sooo....what am I missing here?
posted by Winston Smith at
2:51 PM
3 Comments:
If we didn't gave separate bathrooms for men and women, I wonder if this would even be a problem.
Seriously, RMK.
I've never understood how this attempt at reclassification is helping to resolve any problems. If the problem is that the individual in question wants to do those things typically associated with the other sex, then, as WS points out above, by all means, go for it. There's no need to be considered male or female.
I can't figure out how this isn't simply an attempt to control how others perceive and act towards the person in question.
And if that's all this is, then it's stupid.
I think MK's question is a good one...
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home