All So Confusing

So, now that Bruce is no longer calling himself Bruce, it seems to just get more and more confusing. He made the unfortunate choice to call himself "Caitlyn". Unfortunate because I know a Kaitlyn. She's pregnant. So I asked my wife the other day, "When is Kaitlyn's baby due?" just after the story about Bruce calling himself Caitlyn and my wife was baffled. "He can't have kids!" Well, of course not. I was talking about the female Kaitlyn. Oh, now, see? Confusing. So he's now a she, but doesn't have--never had, never will have, could not have--the ability to bear children. But we're narrow when we suggest that "female" has a biological meaning.

In the story about Bruce/Caitlyn they mentioned several times (because the story was everywhere) about the change from "Bruce Jenner--Olympic athlete" to "Caitlyn Jenner--woman". And, again, I was confused. So, if Bruce Jenner has always been a woman trapped in a man's body, then what was she doing competing in men's sports? Will they require that she surrender her Olympic medals because they were acquired incorrectly? And will she be allowed to compete in women's sports in the future? Because I'm pretty sure that the male body--musculature, genetics, etc.--she inhabits is built different than a woman's body and would make it an unfair competition. All very confusing.

I cannot fathom a world where physical reality is simply determined by how any individual feels. The skeptics tell us we're nutty for putting our faith in what they like to call "the flying spaghetti monster" when we should be trusting to empirical science. And then they conclude that because he (or she) feels like he's a she (or he), it's true. So much for empirical science.

Here, think about it from this direction. Today's society is screaming at us that gender is fluid, that it's not some stupid binary thing, that it is whatever you think it is. My work sent out a questionnaire about diversity in the workplace which included a question of what gender I was. They gave me four choices. Facebook, they tell me, offers 50. So what's the big deal if a person is born in a male body and is actually female? Gender is meaningless. Gender norms are societal. It just doesn't matter! Oh, really? Then why is it necessary for Bruce to alter his body and assume the appearance and mannerisms of a woman? If gender doesn't matter, why bother? Just be. If gender is irrelevant, why is it an issue at all? I would think that, rather than demonstrating the irrelevance of gender, Bruce is proving that gender norms exist and that gender is important. But, hey, that's just me.

I'm telling you, it's all so confusing.