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Tuesday, March 13, 2018

Just a few thoughts for our times

Transgender Dichotomy

The idea of transgender is that a person born in the body of one particular gender believes him or herself to actually be the other gender. (Mind you, that's simplified. They go all sorts of places with that, a spectrum of possibilities. That's just the easy version.) The suggestion (nay, the outright statement) is that gender is a social construct, not a biological reality. Now, the fact is that no male body has a uterus and no female body produces sperm (just to name a couple of obvious biological differences), but this biological reality does not intrude in the transgender notion. Ultimate Reality resides in the mind of the beholder, and no amount of science is going to change that.

Why is it, given their dismissal of the notion that physical reality should define internal reality, that the aim of the sufferers of gender dysphoria is to transform themselves physically into their internal reality? If they've already indicated that physical doesn't matter, why does it matter? If all genders are equal and there is no significant difference between male and female, why do guys who believe themselves to be gals work so hard to conform to the image of female (and vice versa for girls who believe themselves to be guys)? Why are they discarding the physical and societal notions of gender and then working really hard to take up the physical and societal notions of gender? And force others to play along?

The Age of Consent

When did "consent" become the gatekeeper for all things moral? The other day I was talking to someone about the article I read in which a porn website pulled ads from a congressional candidate because he was accused of sexual abuse. Now, this website would have videos of sexual abuse (real or acted out), so why were they complaining about a candidate who acted out what they had on their site? Were they just mad because they didn't get the video? Well, someone told me, "It's not abuse if it's consensual." When did that happen? When did we enter the Age of Consent?

It's not true, you know. I mean, we say it is, but we don't believe that. We didn't really care if women and girls do not give consent to a guy who identifies as a girl being in their bathrooms and locker rooms. In their case, consent doesn't matter. A 40-year-old man who has consensual sex ("Consensual": involving or carried out by mutual consent) with a 12-year-old (male or female) will be accused of statutory rape. A woman who has sex with her dog even though she didn't coerce it is guilty of bestiality. No amount of consent will allow a man to marry three women (polygamy) or two men and two women to marry each other as a group (polyamory). "Consent" is not the end-all for morality. It's only the license we confer when we want to allow previously immoral acts and withhold when we don't. Thus, beating a woman is a crime against which women march ... unless she is a masochist who consents to it; then it's a bestseller and a hit movie.

We live in an age when "consent" defines "moral," but we don't really, and we don't really know why. The question is not "Do I approve?", but "Is it right?" Lacking any basis for an answer, we're left with random methods of determining morality. Expect random results.

The Intolerance of the Tolerant

Why is it that the loudest, most intolerant people are the ones crying for tolerance? They shout down the voices of those with whom they disagree. They create labels like "bigot" or "hater" or "homophobe" or whatever will turn your anger against those with whom they disagree. The guy who says, "The Bible holds that homosexual behavior is a sin" is saddled with an "anti-gay intolerance" label.

If you're white, your racist. If you're male, you're sexist. If you don't know it, you're "not woke." If you're Trump (whether the actual guy or anyone remotely connected to him), you're evil and deserve to be hated! If you ask, "Does science really demonstrate that climate change is the direct result of human activity?", you are immediately castigated as a "climate denier" and dismissed as an idiot.

"No, don't kill lions; yes, keep killing babies legal." "No, don't take away my rights to free speech; yes, take away their rights to the same." "We will fight for the rights of LGBT but dismiss the 1st Amendment rights of Christians." Jon Favreau, director of Ironman (1 and 2), Chef, and The Jungle Book, is slated to create a live Star Wars series. It is evil and wrong because ... he's male and white. Or take the example of Mike Pence tweeting about honoring and empowering women to be castigated by women. "Every woman hates you." Nice tolerance. Lots of examples of the intolerance of the tolerant.


Often the Bible proves itself to be true. We suffer from deceived hearts (Jer 17:9), made insane by sin (Rom 1:28ff), in need of Christ who gives a new heart (Ezek 36:26), and a renewed mind (Rom 12:2).

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

One Canadian white heterosexual male with Marxist leanings devotes a fair bit of his social media page to calling out white males for bad behavior. I don't think I've ever seen him criticize any other category of people, except maybe the heterosexuals. He would have been prime recruitment fodder for the Symbionese Liberation Army of the 1970s.

He's the most extreme case I've seen on social media, as far as the furious pace of his condemnation, but I have noticed others who save their condemnation for white males.

The other day a web page lauded someone who is setting up a fund (not sure if that is the right technical term for it) to direct investors' capital specifically to young businesses operated by females and people of color. I suppose that is legal under US law, but I suspect it wouldn't be if whites or males were the targeted owners.

It has been a dozen years maybe since I paused on a TV show where ex-NFL player Warren Sapp was talking about how the white team owners who pay the likes of him tens of millions of dollars are today's slave masters. He said he was inviting people of color to invest in a scheme he had to get them the wealth that they deserve, which they didn't already possess because of the perfidy of the white man, see. I turned it off after a couple of minutes and didn't understand in detail what he was trying to do.

A few years later I read that Sapp filed for bankruptcy. I'm not sure if it was a just personal bankruptcy, or also bankruptcy of the scheme he seemed to be pitching on TV, but it suggests to me that any black folks who invested with Sapp likely came to regret it.

Stan said...

I recently learned of the new use of a term we've always had -- "woke". If you are "woke", apparently, you are embracing your complicity in the white male racism and sexism. If you are not embracing your complicity, "you ain't woke" yet.

Like the story of the lawyer who asked, "Mr. Jones, yes or no, have you stopped beating your wife?", white males (add in "American" and "Christian" for more) have very few other options. You're either guilty and you know it or you're guilty but don't know it. There is no option of being a white male who is not guilty. They've even redefined "racist" and "sexist" to mean "only if you are in power." To hate other races or a particular gender is not racist or sexist if it is not a white male doing it.

Bob said...

I am not sure which part of my whiteness should "woke" is it the Anglo or the Saxson.
i believe they were both a little responsible for the fallen condition of white men. i would seek repatriation but their all dead. now what? i cant help wondering if there is something i can do to hate myself enough to matter. oh i know i can blame my great,great grand parents, they were plantation owners.. that's it, now that i have a good guilty anchor point. i can hate myself for being the son of someone i never knew. but something is still missing. to really come to terms i should join a group of self haters, and like lemmings we can all jump off a cliff. but wait that would be a great disservice to those that need someone to hate. it all about supply and demand. there is a great demand for people like me, so it is my Anglo-Saxon civic duty to remain present, so as to ensure sufficient supply of 'wokes..." i know it hurts to love me, but i feels so good when you stop..

Craig said...

Re: transgender. We’ve reached the point where it’s fashionable to reject what the science of biology tells us, in favor of the whims of the mind. An interesting position for those who deify science when it helps their political positions.

Stan said...

Imagine the conflict when a guy believes himself a woman and becomes the director of a Quebec feminist society.

Craig said...

Just wait until a guy “transitioning” starts winning championships in women’s sports.

Or wait until people tell us that not all women have a uterus.

Or does this mean that a man transitioning to a woman is allowed to actually talk about abortion?

It’s all very confusing for those of us who think that the physical is more substantial than the non physical.

Anonymous said...

In my public school days all boys took a class called "Industrial Arts" and all girls took a class called "Home Economics." We also had mandatory Phys. Ed. ("gym") classes that were strictly segregated by sex. Sports were also segregated by sex, and girls did not have wrestling available for them to participate in, while boys did not have drill flags available to them.

Do any of you know what the situation is these days? I've totally lost touch with all that.

Stan said...

Craig, It is all very, very, very confusing. The Huffington Post was happy to agree that a white guy thought he was a girl, but not so much that he thought he was also filipino. Without any moorings in any facts, there's just no way to know ... anything, is there?

Anonymous, I don't know what they teach anymore, but it isn't like MY school days.

Craig said...

I was joking with a guy I used to work with that he should show up to his mandatory diversity training in a dress, use a feminized version of his name, and announce that he identifies as a woman now. I’m guessing it wouldn’t go over well.

Stan said...

Seriously, do you think? I wonder. Our organization has an actual diversity department. They are really big on "inclusion". I wonder how they would react if someone (like me) showed up as you described. Would they embrace it or decry it? I'm not sure.

Craig said...

I’m guessing that they wouldn’t.