By Alex Grass
Monday, June 19, 2017
My father-in-law is a smart and accomplished lady.
Grandma M is a transgender woman who majored in physics at Columbia University
and earned a black belt in karate. I choose to refer to Grandma M as a woman
because, in my mind, she is a woman. Nobody forced me to think that. It’s a
choice rooted in visual perception, familial respect, and love. But it seems
that a certain political faction disagrees with this voluntary approach.
A few months ago, at Grandma M’s traditionalist dojo, a karate classmate—let’s call her
“Xir-Says”—threw a tantrum over the politics of language. Xir-Says demanded to
be referred to as “Xir-Says-San.”
Her sensei
tried to explain that San is an
honorific reserved for students who’d proved themselves worthy by demonstrating
certain skills, that it was presumptuous for Xir-Says to make such a demand
since she hadn’t earned it by demonstrating high-level expertise, and that
students who hadn’t passed the San
benchmark, like her, could be called either “Miss” or “Mister.” She didn’t
care. Xir-Says insisted that being called “Miss,” or anybody being called “Miss” or “Mister,” was discriminatory and
insulting to “intersex” and “gender non-binary people.”
This was absurd, political posturing. Xir-Says’s sex is
female, and she doesn’t say otherwise. But the sensei relented, fearful of the potential backlash that might
ensue—Facebook and Twitter shame-bombs, rebuke from a rash of Brooklynite
neo-Marxian muckrakers—should he not obey Xir-Says’ demands. She is now called
Xir-Says-San. Low-skill students
needn’t any longer be referred to as “Miss” or “Mister.” A longstanding
tradition was eroded by the gender identity demands of an impertinent brat.
Are We Fully Human
If We’re Slaves?
There is no place for commanding specific language—thoughts, even—in a free and open
society. As more people surrender to the illogical demands of a totalitarian
minority, our world becomes less free and more closed. Fear reigns, cowardice
replaces courage. We are now confronted with the same question Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn asked when facing down the Soviet police state decades ago: “If
one is forever cautious, can one remain a human being?”
If you’ve never censored yourself from fear of offending
the ultra-righteous and politically correct language monitors, you’ve likely
been out of the country for a while. This is all a logical extension of the New
Left’s obsession with power, a power they believe must be wielded against the
counter-revolutionary dogmas of liberty and faith. Their power madness allows
them to define others’ beliefs, since those pesky beliefs, hidden within the
primitive mind, are also counter-revolutionary. This is the demon lurking in
democracy.
In 2016, the Little Sisters of the Poor—a group of
Catholic nuns who provide low-income housing to the elderly—pleaded to the
Supreme Court that they could not provide birth control to employees as a
matter of religious conscience. When
President Obama’s Solicitor General Don Verrilli was asked during oral argument
whether forcing the Little Sisters to provide birth control meant they would
be, in their own understanding, complicit in a moral wrong, Verrilli said it
was up to the court to define the Little Sisters’ beliefs: “We’re saying that
the judgment about complicity is up to you.”
The reasoned theological argument of some 50 Catholic
theologians and ethicists that “judgments by federal courts about profound and
difficult questions of moral complicity … res[t] on misapprehensions about the
theological principles of the religious traditions at issue” was not a
rationale that the Obama administration, with its vision of a postliberal
societal order, was willing to accept. Not then, not now, not ever.
Eventually,
They’ll Come For You, Too
More and more of this Orwellian power—the power to hold
up four fingers and demand you say “five!”—is bearing down upon people who’ve
until now been content to leave well enough alone. But minding your own
business no longer provides a guarantee of peace. The defense lines have been
pushed back. Where the Little Sisters were guarding against being forced to act according to postliberal diktat, now
dissenters are defending against being forced to think according to postliberal diktat.
In New York City, the government issued a list of 31
forbidden gender pronouns including “butch,” “two-spirit,” and “hijra,” along
with an ominous warning to “respect the terminology a transgender person uses
to describe their identity” unless you want the offended party to call the NYC
Human Rights Commission. Our northerly neighbors have jumped even two steps
ahead of that. The Parliament of Canada just passed a new law (Bill C-16) that
penalizes—maybe even criminalizes—the refusal to use preferred gender pronouns.
The storm has gathered and one is left with only two
choices: Obey or disobey. Those who have a solemn obligation to speak
out—professors, the press, clergy, big money donors—have fallen silent, or worse,
actively aided in transmuting logic into deconstructed mush.
The era of live and let live is behind us. Jordan
Peterson, the Canadian psychology professor who brought the Bill C-16
controversy to light after publicly denouncing it, recognized this to be true:
“If they fine me I won’t pay it. If they put me in jail I’ll go on a hunger
strike.”
Today, one must choose between compliance and civil
disobedience. I say my mind is my own.
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