O Brave New World of Gender!
A disturbing documentary exposes the comedy and depravity of gender ideology
The entire feminist project, all the way back to Mary Woolstonecraft and I suppose even to Sappho, has been an exercise in wrongthink and futility: That was my takeaway from the Matt Walsh documentary, What Is a Woman?
You can if you wish denounce Walsh as a bomb-throwing right-wing provocateur (he is, kind of) but in What Is a Woman? he simply asks that question of assorted transgender activists, therapists, theorists, ordinary people. And their answer boils down to, Um, whatever...
I do not exaggerate. It turns out that the postmodern ideology of gender is a hollow shell. A woman is any human being who identifies as a woman and the definition of woman is any human being who identifies as such. This is known as gender fluidity and if you’re thinking that the concept embodies an element of circularity, you wouldn’t be wrong.
So where does that leave feminism? For if gender ideology is valid, then all the feminist tomes published since Betty Friedan may as well be pulped. Though today’s fourth-wave feminists would be loathe to admit it, until about fifteen minutes ago feminism was based on genetic and biological realities. Remember The Vagina Monologues? Once upon a time that play was part of the feminist canon. But now it’s…problematical. The vagina, the uterus, the whole physical fabric of womanhood as once understood have been deleted from the definition of woman. In their place stands an abstract concept: identity. She who identifies as a woman is a woman, be she ever so endowed with the biological apparatus of a man.
As Walsh repeats his awkward question and his interlocutors struggle to answer it, it gradually becomes obvious that the basis of gender ideology is radical relativism. The telling phrases my truth and your truth pop up. And when he presses for a definition of woman, no one can give one. Or perhaps no one is willing to give one. For I suspect that most people know perfectly well what a woman is, and what a man is. Trouble is, you can’t say that!
But if you can’t say that you can’t say much of anything This comes out clearly in Walsh’s interview with a university professor specializing in issues of gender & etc. The professor is voluble at first but when Walsh presses for an answer to his question, the interview turns circular. Naturally the professor cannot provide a definition of woman without committing a thought crime. So he grows more and more defensive, first demanding to know why Walsh is even asking such a question, then suggesting that the question itself is transphobic, and finally stammering to a halt.
Now of course its defenders assert that gender ideology is based on The Science and that all who question it are despicable bigots. But there is no such Science, for as Walsh’s interviews make clear transgenderism is an exercise of the imagination. A boy who feels that he’s really a girl (or vice versa) exhibits no relevant physical symptoms: It’s all in the kid’s mind. And in the normal course of development the feeling almost always passes. And this is the point at which What Is a Woman ceases to be funny.
All reasonable people can agree, I think, that adults are entitled to their chosen identities. A man who lives as a woman is doing no harm, except possibly to her loved ones and herself. But encouraging prepubescent children to “transition,” often with the help of puberty blockers and surgery, is a practice of horrifying barbarity. There, I said it. The experts and therapists who facilitate this practice, the parents who allow it, are very likely ruining the lives of the children entrusted to their care. This is nothing less than a postmodern variant of human sacrifice.
Walsh’s visit with an African tribe, to whose members he attempts to explain the Western ideology of gender, was funny at first but after a minute or two my smile faded. The men and women of the tribe were vastly amused. They had no doubt that a man is a man and a woman is a woman. I suspect, however, that progressives’ professed respect of all things non-Western cultural would stop short of agreement on that point.
Whose thinking is actually more primitive?
Though Walsh does not too aggressively press the point, there is a suggestion that gender ideology is rooted partly in the profit motive. The relevant therapies, drugs, surgical procedures and so forth are expensive, and isn’t it great that insurance companies and the government can be bullied into treating them as “healthcare”? (Not incidentally, similar considerations of profit motivate the abortion industry.) It’s always so convenient when one’s principles align with one’s financial interests.
And the bottom line? It’s that yes, gender ideology makes nonsense of feminism. Indeed, there’s something pathetic about feminists’ capitulation to a doctrine teaching, in effect, that womanhood is a mere figment of the human imagination. And yes, gender ideology has evolved into a destructive, one might say demonic force. But after all, the radical relativism that permeates gender ideology is the foundational principle of postmodern progressivism: the basis of its implicit doctrine that morality is plastic, and that the ends justify the means.
I've worked hard at this gender fluidity bit and am trying to buy into to this personal pronoun thing. However, being old the only two pronouns I can remember are "she" and "it." I've been using those a lot lately.