Sunday, May 30, 2021
There's No Such Thing as "Gender..."
...not for humans, at least. "We" here at Unforeseen Contingencies are sticklers for precision in thinking, and that requires precision in concepts, which in turn requires precision in language. One of the most powerful tools of the totalitarians who call themselves the "left" is manipulation of language. The great economists Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek lamemnted how leftists stole the term "liberal" from advocates of individual rights, free markets, and the minimal state and twisted it to mean socialism. Mises noted that statists changed the meaning of "inflation" from "expansion of the money supply" to "price increases," intentionally confusing effect with cause, thus throwing up a smokescreen for their policies. Hayek observed the tendency of leftists to append the adjective "social" to a concept to turn it into its opposite while seeming to support it, as with "social justice." Justice is a standard for treating everyone equally, i.e. as he or she deserves. Social justice is about treating people unequally, according to the group to which one assigns them, with some rewarded at the expense of others, and none according to individual merit or demerit. Social justice is anti-justice.
In this vein, a current perversion of language and concepts involves "gender." Gender is a perfectly legitimate term within language. Nouns have have gender... for example, in German, gender of a noun is signified by the definite articles die, der, and das. In French it's le and la. English dispenses with this. And none of it has anything to do with sex.
Humans and other mammals have sex. That's not "have sex" as a grammatically suspect way of saying "engage in sexual relations," that's "humans are male or female." Sex is genetically determined. It is one's biological nature. It is not "assigned at birth," and it is not an identity one chooses or feels. Some men are, no doubt, not very manly, and some women not very womanly, but they are still men and women, or boys and girls if immature.
With that in mind, consider the idiocy of "gender." Tumblr apparently lists 112 different "genders" as of 2021, but also 71 prefixes. That alone gives 8064 (112 x 72) genders. But since "genders" and modifiers expand as quickly as someone imagines a new one, the list is effectively unlimited. No doubt each requires its own pronouns and forms or address. That is truly idiocy, of course. It is destructive of clear thought, oncepts and language. It is nihilism. Or in other words, it's nonsense.
I know at at least one transexual person who went throught treatment to give up being the man he was born as and become a pseudo-woman. I understand that this man had emotional problems, and in his case I think they might have been partly resolved by his transition. But he is not a woman. And at this point -- the point where children are fed puberty blockers and hormones and mutilated -- and where fanatics are trying to force everyone to accept the lie that there are many "genders" and one can change sex or gender at will -- there can be no more playing along with such fantasies. Reality is not optional.
Sex is genetic, it is one's nature. There's no such thing as gender.
(Further reading: "Female is a Fact" by Anony Mee on American Thinker, and "Our Increasingly Unrecognizable Civilization" by Mark Steyn in Hillsdale College's Imprimis.
In this vein, a current perversion of language and concepts involves "gender." Gender is a perfectly legitimate term within language. Nouns have have gender... for example, in German, gender of a noun is signified by the definite articles die, der, and das. In French it's le and la. English dispenses with this. And none of it has anything to do with sex.
Humans and other mammals have sex. That's not "have sex" as a grammatically suspect way of saying "engage in sexual relations," that's "humans are male or female." Sex is genetically determined. It is one's biological nature. It is not "assigned at birth," and it is not an identity one chooses or feels. Some men are, no doubt, not very manly, and some women not very womanly, but they are still men and women, or boys and girls if immature.
With that in mind, consider the idiocy of "gender." Tumblr apparently lists 112 different "genders" as of 2021, but also 71 prefixes. That alone gives 8064 (112 x 72) genders. But since "genders" and modifiers expand as quickly as someone imagines a new one, the list is effectively unlimited. No doubt each requires its own pronouns and forms or address. That is truly idiocy, of course. It is destructive of clear thought, oncepts and language. It is nihilism. Or in other words, it's nonsense.
I know at at least one transexual person who went throught treatment to give up being the man he was born as and become a pseudo-woman. I understand that this man had emotional problems, and in his case I think they might have been partly resolved by his transition. But he is not a woman. And at this point -- the point where children are fed puberty blockers and hormones and mutilated -- and where fanatics are trying to force everyone to accept the lie that there are many "genders" and one can change sex or gender at will -- there can be no more playing along with such fantasies. Reality is not optional.
Sex is genetic, it is one's nature. There's no such thing as gender.
(Further reading: "Female is a Fact" by Anony Mee on American Thinker, and "Our Increasingly Unrecognizable Civilization" by Mark Steyn in Hillsdale College's Imprimis.
