"Transgender" Man Wins Women's Cycling Championship

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Q: How many legs does a horse have if we call its tail a leg?
A: Four. Calling it one doesn't make it one.

That's actually a pretty insightful little riddle...

   Rachel McKinnon is a man who prefers to represent himself as a woman--as is his right. (He's also a philosopher, incidentally.) But, really, no serious puzzle arises simply because someone cooked up the term "trans woman." "Trans women" are men--adult males. Calling them "women"--or some version of the term--doesn't change that. Word magic is as fictional as any other kind of magic. If we're going to use such a term at all, the term for someone like McKinnon should be 'trans man.' Though 'man', alone, is sufficient.

   It's astonishing to me--and disheartening--that the left is so easily manipulated. Liberals were certainly right to take the side of sexual minorities in the sexual revolution. But progressives have, as usual, taken a good idea and pushed it to an absurd extreme. Instead of protecting the rights of a minority to live their lives largely without interference from others...they've fallen over the edge. Now they're arguing that the interests of sexual minorities trumps not only the rights of others to live without interference, but facts as well.

   My own august institution is currently considering a faculty senate resolution which would make non-standard pronoun use upon demand mandatory. I won't do it...so we're talking about a resolution that could cost me my job. If the administration were so foolish as to try to enforce it. Which, of course, they won't be, as it's an obvious attempt to compel speech. Still...it's a sad damn day when the courts and the administration have to curb the totalitarian impulses of faculty. I'm beginning to think that, among all of academia's many problems, its takeover by the left may just be the most serious.