Political Corretness / Progressivism / Orwellian Leftism Entails Relativism...Or *Some* Kind Of Radical Non-Realism

Man, I sure do hate being right all the time.

   Identity politics decreed that we all get to declare our sex-or-gender* and make it so by fiat. But as lots of people pointed out right away: there's no rational way to limit such a decree to sex-or-gender. If it goes for sex-or-gender, then it goes for race...and Rachel Dolezal, in fact, arrived on the scene right on the heels of Caitlyn (nee Bruce) Jenner. Rational people immediately said: whelp, if you're down with Jenner, then you've got to be down with Dolezal. The progressive left responded: THAT'S DIFFERENT AND IF YOU EVEN SUGGEST THAT IT'S THE SAME YOU ARE A RACIST RACIST!!!!111OOOONNNNEEEEOOOONNNNEEEEOOOONNNNEEEEE

   Rebecca Tuvel made the mistake of pointing out, in print, that the same principles that countenance Jenner's sex-or-gender "transition" countenance Dolezal's racial "transition." The NPCs that control online philosophy discussions nearly got the journal to retract her paper (and basically everyone affiliated with the journal, Hypatia, ended up quitting...though I can't recall whether that was because they were pro- or anti-free-inquiry...). They also inflicted significant psychological stress on her, and could very well have ruined her career. 

   At any rate, it's as clear as it could be that, if you get to declare whatever you like about your sex-or-gender, then you get to declare whatever you like about your race...and any other personal characteristic you'd like: height, weight, age, degree of attractiveness, IQ...you name it. And there's simply no reason whatsoever to limit that to properties of oneself--your height is no less a factual matter than someone else's height. Nor than whether there are trees in Arkansas or how many moons the Earth has. As is so often the case, the progressive orthodoxy is unsane and unstable. I f not artificially limited to the things they want to limit it to, it collapses immediately into absurdity. If so limited, it so collapses a bit more slowly, because it's a bit less obviously daft.

   Since PC is largely an impressionistic game of fashions, whether the UCU is reactionary or visionary can only be determined by whether their declaration catches on. Though, of course, next month's visionary is next year's reactionary. They are definitely in line with the logical implications of transgender ideology...but the Orwellian left doesn't care about that at all. Consistency is the hobgoblin of Westernwhitestraightmale minds. In fact, transgender ideology and much of the rest of Orwellian leftism survives only because it keeps a fairly tight reign on what thoughts are thinkable by its adherents and subjects, and which are discussable. If the relativistic / nonrealistic implications of the view were widely acknowledged, that'd be the end of it. It is absolutely no accident whatsoever that the illiberal left is firmly dedicated to speech-and-thought control. That's such a high-risk, resource-intensive project that no political faction that doesn't need it is going to invest in it. Implications want to be free. Totalitarian thought-police want them contained.

*They're radically confused about that distinction, so they're radically confused about what they're tyring to say dependson our declarations. Or, rather: they're strategically unclear about what they're saying. The ambiguity/vagueness/indeterminacy is largely intentional. Neither sex nor gender (in anything like the formerly-feminist sense) will do. Sex manifestly cannot be changed by thinking or saying--that's empirically provable. If you think you've found someone who can change their sex by thinking or saying it's different, by all means, send them to science. It'll be one of the most amazing discoveries of all time. If 'gender' means masculinity/femininity, then, since those are behavioral things, they can largely be changed by acting differently--even if it's a put-on. You can, with some effort, act more masculine or more feminine. People do it all the time. It's one of the main things feminists used to criticize. You can change your gender--but not by merely saying or thinking. The only things that can be brought into existence and given their properties entirely by saying or thinking are fictions. Bigfoot's reality is entirely dependent upon saying and thinking. To make gender entirely dependent on saying or thinking, it, too, must be a fiction...