The Emperor Has No Womb

The big lie is that gender identity is about gender. As a recent video demonstrates with on-campus interviews of university students, the big truth is that the political battle about who gets to use the women’s washroom is just the thin edge of a wedge in what is actually a war over metaphysics; a war started by the proponents of social metaphysics; a war against rational thought, free choice, and individual freedom. Specifically, gender identity is about getting people to trump reality with delusional beliefs about what is real. In technical philosophical terms: it is a war to replace, in everyone’s mind, the primacy of existence with the primacy of consciousness.

The Family Policy Institute of Washington has released a video in which its fair skinned, green-eyed, blonde-haired, 5’9″ Director, Joseph Backholm, attends the University of Washington’s campus to see just how far today’s university students have been trained to reject reality and to conform.

He starts with the stuff that, at this point, a considerable percentage of people have been trained to accept, for fear of being called “transphobic”: he has them all gush about how a person should be able to use a male or female washroom or locker room based not upon their genitalia, but based upon whether they “identify” as a man or a woman. Having shown that his interviewees are all on-board with a person’s beliefs trumping physical evidence, and with making public policy in accordance with beliefs rather than observable facts, he moves on to show just how far these people are willing to publicly reject reality, in favour of a person’s personal delusions, whims, or desires.

He starts with a lob ball. “If I told you I am a woman, what would your response be?”. Like well trained seals, they give what they believe to be politically correct answers: “good for you”, “nice to meet you”, “I don’t have a problem with it”, etc. Then, bit by bit, Backholm cranks it up.

“If I told you that I was Chinese, what would your response be”. Again, out come the politically correct statements: “I mean, I might be a little surprised but I’d say, good for you, yeah, be who you are”, “I would maybe thing you had some Chinese ancestor”, “Um, I would have a lot of questions, just because…on the outside, you appear to be a white man”.

“If I told you that I was 7 years old, what would your response be?”. Among the similarly conciliatory responses is included: “If you feel 7 at heart then so be it, yeah, good for you”, etc..

“If [as a person self-identifying as a seven year old] I wanted to enroll in a first grade class, do you think I should be allowed to?”: “If that’s where you feel – mentally – you should be then I feel that there are communities that would accept you for that”.

“If I told you I’m six feet, five inches, what would you say?”. The students, one after another, say they wouldn’t believe it, but would be fine with him believing it and…would not tell him that he is wrong: “I feel like that’s not my place as, like, another human, to say someone is wrong or to draw lines or boundaries”.

From the student who said she would tell him he was wrong about being six feet five inches tall, he seeks clarification. “So I can be a Chinese woman?”: “Yes.” “But I can’t be a six foot five Chinese woman?”: “Yes”. And another: “If you thoroughly debated me or explain why you felt that you are six foot five, I feel like I would be very open to saying that you’re six foot five, or Chinese, or a woman”.

Backholm, addressing the camera, concludes: “It shouldn’t be hard to tell a five-nine white guy that he’s not a six foot five Chinese woman. But, clearly it is. Why? What does that say about our culture? And what does that say about our ability to answer the questions that actually are difficult?”

I congratulate Backholm on recording the evidence of students unwilling to call things as they literally see them. However, let me answer his concluding question.

It’s not a matter of anyone’s “ability” to answer questions. It is about one’s willingness to do so, but more fundamentally, it is about one’s willingness to let another person’s opinions or feelings take precedence over reality, as that reality is perceived by one’s own five senses. By way of persuasion and coercion, these students are being told that if they don’t play along, they will be ostracized, marginalized, and punished by society.

That injustice is a big pill to swallow. It’s the stuff of Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead”, echoed in George Orwell’s “1984”. And, clearly, many people – as an alternative to being victimized for saying that things are what they are regardless of anyone’s whims or beliefs – decide simply to convince themselves that reality really is that which is determined by the subjective opinions of others, no matter how at odds those opinions are with the observed physical evidence of the senses. In other words, to avoid persecution, they convince themselves that consciousness has primacy over existence/reality.

Once they accept that inversion – once they accept that another person’s self-identification determines what that person is; once they adopt the political stance of “Who am I to say that another person is wrong about their own identity?” – they are vulnerable to the next logical step in the assault on reality and reason. Specifically, if another person’s beliefs dictate what you believe about their identity, you are primed to accept that another person’s beliefs dictate what you believe about your own identity. If another person says that you’re a six foot five Chinese woman, who are you to say otherwise, given that the subjective beliefs of others are the essence of reality? More to the point: if another person says your identity is such that you are inherently guilty and worthy of punishment – because, say, you are Jewish, or dark-skinned, or “cis gendered” male, or wealthy…or a non-believer – who are you to deny it?

Once you concede that the arbiter of reality is another person’s fantasies – that you must ignore reality and make another person’s claims the dictator of your own reality – you are ripe for any form of tyranny. The philosophical attack on reality that begins in bathrooms will find reality, reason, your own happiness, and your freedom in the toilet, unless you openly refuse to play along with the would-be tyrants; unless you oppose government policy that caters to fantasy and feelings at the cost of reality and reason. If you value your freedom, you must be prepared and willing to declare openly, calmly, and defiantly that the Emperor has no womb.

{Post script: Lest anyone mistake my message. Let me be clear. I oppose laws that would treat individuals differently according to what sex(es) they find sexually attractive, or according to what they believe themselves to be. I have no hang-ups about male and female washrooms, having spent three of my university years in a co-ed dorm, where men and women showered in the same stalls, and defecated in stalls side-by-side. And, as a helpful hint, but not as a matter of government policy, I offer this: probably the best way to deal with everyone’s hang-ups is simply to have single-stall bathrooms that can be used by anyone, as is the case with most so-called “handicap” washrooms and with “porta-potties”}