Off the Rails

In the "enlightened" UK a researcher was fired because she tweeted that "transgender women cannot change their biological sex." What??!! They can't??!! No, people, they can't. Not even in the transgender world. Biological sex is determined at birth and does not ever change. No biological male grows a uterus and no biological female produces semen or sperm. It doesn't happen. No one changes their sex chromosomes. It's a scientific impossibility. It's not hate; it's fact. That some people self-identify as the opposite gender does not mean that they change biological sex. Nor does the claim that they don't change biological sex preclude the possibility that they self-identify as the opposite gender.

We have gone off the rails. It was a decade ago that the media cheerfully reported on the "world's first man to get pregnant." Of course he did; just ask the Guinness World Records 2010. Huffpost assured us this last year that "Women aren't the only people who get abortions." The ACLU is outraged that anyone would think that only women have menstrual cycles. "Men," these people tell us, "have abortions and periods." I think, "You keep using that word; I don't think it means what you think it means." We've embraced Humpty Dumpty lunacy.

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master — that's all." (1871 Through the Looking-Glass, ch.6, "Humpty Dumpty")

That is the question, isn't it? Who will be master? Not God, certainly. Not science, it appears. Not logic or reason, it seems. It's simply "I will." So we each, as our own masters, define the meaning of things and expect everyone else to bend to our wills.

Completely off the rails. That is, we can stop now and quit talking, quit reasoning, quit exchanging ideas. These kinds of things require symbols that mean something to all parties involved, and we have by definition undefined ... just about everything. "Judgmental," "inclusivity," "tolerance," "hate," "Christianity," "marriage" -- the list goes on and on. "Male" is defined as "a person bearing an X and Y chromosome pair in the cell nuclei and normally having a penis, scrotum, and testicles, and developing hair on the face at adolescence; a boy or man." "Female" is defined as "a person bearing two X chromosomes in the cell nuclei and normally having a vagina, a uterus and ovaries, and developing at puberty a relatively rounded body and enlarged breasts, and retaining a beardless face; a girl or woman." No longer! When I say "man" and think "a male" I am not speaking the same language as the rest who say "man" and think "whatever you think it is ... except not that." And we're done. Humpty Dumpty wins. Nonsense rules ... by force of law in some nations. Very possibly coming soon to a nation near you.