Checking Boxes: Transgender Chic

BreakPoint with Charles Colson ^ | April 1, 2004 | Charles Colson

[Mr. Silverback]

Members of the next incoming freshman class at Brown University will enjoy a new option when it comes to on-campus housing: what the school calls a “gender-neutral option.” Students selecting that option will live in a dorm with “lockable bathrooms for use by one person.”

While we all like our privacy, just what kind of student requires these special accommodations? The answer: The newest fashionable minority on colleges campuses, “transgender students.”

Fifty years ago, George Jorgensen stunned the world when he checked into a Copenhagen hospital and left as Christine Jorgensen after the world’s first sex-change surgery.

Until recently, claims that someone was “a man trapped in a woman’s body,” or vice versa, were regarded with skepticism. The reason is clear: Many of the people making these claims suffer from some kind of mental illness, and what they really need is treatment, not radical surgery. Even more importantly, there was a well-founded reluctance to believe that nature had somehow made a “mistake.”

Now, as events at Brown demonstrate, we don’t hesitate to think that nature might have made a mistake. In fact, we deny that nature has anything to do with a person’s sex. That’s because of the influence that feminism and “queer theory,” as it is called, have on college campuses.

For both of these philosophies, the idea that there is such a thing as fixed human nature, or one biologically determined, especially with regard to sexuality, is the enemy. If we are, as the Scriptures say, created male and female, then this limits our personal autonomy—which is, after all, the summum bonum of modern American life.

And so postmodern academics replaced the word sex with gender, a word historically associated with classification and description. This enabled feminists to claim that the qualities normally associated with the sexes were socially constructed, that is, imposed from without as opposed to being inherent. “Queer theorists” depict human sexuality as a continuum as opposed to being “either/or.” So a man, biologically, can choose to be feminine, and vice versa—just another life choice.

While these ideas didn’t hold much sway among ordinary Americans, they’ve become articles of faith on college campuses and among elites. They’ve been added to another staple of postmodern thought, identity politics, which views membership in a particular group as the basis for all action. The result is separate dorms for “transgender students”—that is, men who choose to be feminine and women who choose to be masculine.

If this sounds absurd to you, you’re not alone. Phillip Johnson tells a story in his great book The Right Questions about a fellow faculty member at Berkeley who taught his students the postmodern line. Then his son began crossdressing, and dad, despite his proclamations, was embarrassed to introduce him at a dinner party. All the young man was doing, of course, was following his father’s teaching.

Even postmodern academics can be awakened when they see where their worldview leads. On some level they still understand that transgender, as it is called, is not only a violation of the moral order, but also a violation of the biological order. It takes a lot more to overcome “male and female He created them” than checking a box on a college housing form.

[Mr. Silverback]

No, it's not an April Fools joke.

[Mr. Silverback]

BreakPoint/Chuck Colson Ping!

If anyone wants on or off my BreakPoint Ping List, please notify me here or by freepmail.

[Dan from Michigan]

I refer to them as "Its"

[JimRed]

...Many of the people making these claims suffer from some kind of mental illness...

Many? How about ALL? Like homosexuality, it is a mental defect.

[muawiyah]

Looks like a way to get access to a semi-private bath facility at dormitory rates. People will pay for that, and if all you have to do is say you are confused about your gender (he, she, it) what's the big deal?!

[Jim Noble]

we don’t hesitate to think that nature might have made a mistake. In fact, we deny that nature has anything to do with a person’s sex.

What do you mean, "we"?

There will come a time when these mutilations by surgeons will be regarded as astonishing barbarisms.

We give political asylum to people subjected to genital mutilation, while we're running a whole industry devoted to it here at home.

[ibbryn]

I'd check that box just for the semi-private restroom.

Paranoid conspiracy theorists might also be interested in that special box. How about checking the box just to prevent Big Bro from getting a clear handle on who you are. I also recommend checking all the race/ethnic boxes you think might even remotely apply to you. And start citing your date of birth as the date of conception. How about dropping your first name and going by your second and using your mother's maiden name.

(on rereading this, it appears I may have either too much time on my hands - still, I'd go for the semi-private bath)

[Paleo Conservative]

I'd check that box just for the semi-private restroom.

I wonder when they'll have to supply separate handicapped transegendered restrooms on each floor of every building.

[dandelion]

No kidding - you can get private bathrooms plus other special amenties, and you never even have to have surgery!!

Wow, I'm a flaming heterosexual and very happy woman, and even _I_ would have been tempted to say "Why yes, sometimes I think like a man" just to get a bathroom that locked at college!

[lady lawyer]

There is no such thing as "sex-change surgery." This is just another aspect of the whole "emperor's new clothes" reasoning that is being foisted upon us.

You can't change a man into a woman through cosmetic surgery, any more than you can change a horse into a zebra by painting stripes on it. "Christine" Jorgensen, and all that have followed him, was not a woman. He was just a poor, confused amputee.

[TopQuark]

separate ecologically safe handicapped transegendered restrooms on each floor of every building for recent immigrants that are victims of domestic violence.

[PeterPrinciple]

You can't change a man into a woman through cosmetic surgery, any more than you can change a horse into a zebra by painting stripes on it.

EXACTLY. If you call a dogs tail a leg, how many legs does it have?

[PeterPrinciple]

I've posted this story before. In the "good old days" when FDIC was closing down banks and selling loans we were at one of the FDIC offices to review a large portfolio. Usually there were a lot of FDIC people standing around and some even helping us. This one occasion, no one was around so we asked why. Turns out a guy had a sex change operation so everyone had to go to a "feel good" meeting to decide what bathroom he would use. We figured out the number of attendees, avg salaries and determined it was costing about $150,000 to decide what bathroom it would use.

[Guillermo]

deny that nature has anything to do with a person’s sex

Further anti-science leftist ideology.