It did not take long for California gubernatorial candidate Caitlyn Jenner to evolve in a politically correct way about transgenderism on the playing field. And he is not even in office yet. The Federalist reports his recent evolution on the “non-issue” of biological males competing against biological women in sports:
I’m not running as a trans activist, I’m running as a California citizen that has lived there for 48 years,” said Jenner. “What I would do as governor is I would put together a commission. Trans women compete in the Olympics, they compete in the NCAA, but when it gets down to the high school level, there’s no guide rules, there’s no rules and regulations how they can.
And trans women who are truly trans, who at a very young age, you know, started proper medical treatment, they’ve grown up as girls — of course, they should be able to compete in girls’ sports,” Jenner said. “But yeah, some guy who hasn’t done any therapy, hasn’t done anything, there has to be a review board. And I would be the first governor to put together a review board to review each case,” Jenner added. “Such a small issue. It’s like a non-issue that’s out there. And I would be surprised if there’s 30 trans athletes in the entire state.
Trans women who are truly trans? Evidently, Jenner believes that the truly trans are a species distinct from dubious ones who are questionably trans—the demi-trans. Behold Hollywood logic. The age at which a young male begins the sorry process of self-mutilation is irrelevant. No matter how many ways a man alters himself, he still carries the same number of Y chromosomes that informed him at the moment of conception. No trans woman will ever become a woman, no matter how deceptive the cosmetic disguise.
Jenner did not grow up as a girl. He began the ordeal of self-erasure in adulthood. He was in his mid-sixties in 2015 when he announced his true female self. By his own logic he himself is not a true trans woman. So what is he? He has hired surgeons to delete the outward signs of his manhood but he remains infected with gazillions of those stubborn, uncooperative Y chromosomes. Again, what is he? Would a review board know? It would not tell us if it did. There are serious sanctions against questioning the orthodoxy of gender-think.
Was Jenner simply an aging man whose reason for celebrity had passed its sell-by date? In desperation to reclaim his name in the news, did he abandon himself to the edgey glamour of transgenderism? Could “transition” have been his way of keeping up with the Kardashians or doing them one better?
Transgenderism: Psychosis À La Mode
Regardless the number of trans athletes, transgenderism is hardly a non-issue. There is nothing “small” about a formally imposed ideology that endorses, promotes, and enforces the denial of external reality. It is a pychosis that has been granted official approval in the false name of tolerance and diversity. A movement—and it is a potent one—that does violence to rationality subverts the common good. It is particularly cruel to the impressionable young. To call Jenner a role model, as he calls himself to the applause of a dizzy cheering section, is obscene.
Conservative pundits willing to consider Jenner’s candidacy because they think him a Republican have forgotten I Am Cait. That was Jenner’s self-glorifying reality TV romp that ran for a full season in 2015 and spilled into 2016. It was cancelled after two episodes for low ratings in the second season. There is only so much mileage to be gotten from a transie update of guess-who’s-coming-to-dinner. But the damage was done. Soft rot spreads. The vulnerable, the suggestible, and the plain silly, were impressed:
Caitlyn went through with what she needed to do in order to live authentically. I can think of no greater role model than someone willing to risk experiencing scrutiny, judgement, and even bigotry, in the name of living honestly. . . . Kinda hard to not feel inspired by Caitlyn’s courage, right?
Whatever else Jenner is—or isn’t—he is grotesque. And indecent.
What Do Transwomen Want?
The Doctor is In. And she is ready to help you achieve the outward appearance that reflects your inner sensibility. Debra Johnson, a Sacramento plastic surgeon, writes with a straight face:
When it comes to breast augmentation, male-to-female patients want full, lifted and symmetrical breasts, with larger areoles and a natural nipple angle.
In other words, the good doctor is happy to accommodate men who want to affix to their own bodies a male fantasy—the large, perfect breasts that less obsessed men thumb through Hustler to look at. A transwoman, then, is essentially a man who becomes his own pin-up.
What Is To Be Done?
Compassion toward individuals undone by what Ryan Anderson calls “the transgender moment” is a matter of person-to-person encounter. The obligations of charity apply one-on-one. Among those of us outside policy-making bureaucracies, these requirements are relational, fluid and unfixed. That is different from acquiescing to an aggressive and spiteful minority intent on subverting biological reality and the concept of rational norms. Transgender activists rage against normality itself.
Gender ideology begins in language. There is no restoring culture without rescuing language from hostage. Reclamation of words is a necessary weapon against transgender dogma. The word gender, the concept it describes, has nothing to do with physiology. It is a grammatical term, part of the set of rules that govern the logic of language. In inflected languages, it dictates agreement between nouns and adjectives or between nouns and verb endings.
La mujer makes sense; El mujer is a contradiction. In linguistic terms, an article and a noun in opposition to each other is nonsensical, an antithesis. Transgenderism carries that antithesis into the cultural realm where it makes madness among us.
Addendum: Try this: On forms that ask you to indicate gender, cross out the word and write in sex. Or N.A. for not applicable. Let them figure out why not at the other end.
