Secularists who subscribe to gender fluidity: Is this new science or just a feeling?

Serious question.

After watching these two videos of seemingly intelligent university students saying things that seem utterly irrational (we would almost want to say crazy), my brain craves a clear answer from you, dear secularists who believe in "gender fluidity".

First, please watch the videos. If you don't watch the videos all the way through, please do not bother to comment on this post.



College Kids Say the Darndest Things








Okay, when I watched those video interviews, my jaw literally was hanging open, and my mind was crying out, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no.... I cannot be seeing and hearing this. We cannot be here. This is a joke."

But, I understand that my position is not the "enlightened" nor "educated" nor "acceptable" one today. The college students in the videos are the ones who stand for the vision and view of the secular elite, our ruling class, so to speak: Academia, government, Hollywood, the arts, the media.

Before my main question, some context:

This rejection of "the gender binary" -- the idea that there are two sexes, male and female -- was not even a thing just a few short years ago. Oh, I'm sure it was always there way out on the fringes, but it was not a part of mainstream thought, not even approaching the radar screen of most Americans, conservative or liberal (or most human beings in general, for the history of mankind).

The concept of "gender fluidity" has blazed onto the scene in a fury, a frenzy, and one might even say faddishly. The very same high-minded folk who champion gender identity ideology today had neither thought about it nor believed in it just a few short years ago. How do I know? Well, I've been a citizen of this planet for 49 years, and I've been politically, socially, and intellectually active for at least the past 35 years. Even having been plugged in for all that time, I am bewildered at the speed of this new line of "gender" thought as it burns through every aspect of our lives and culture -- a line of thought that we all now must agree to, lest we expose ourselves as bigots or troglodytes.

Now my question:

You who are secular pride yourselves on being firmly on the side of science and the material, not believing in nebulous, emotions-based things like religion, God, metaphysics, the supernatural, the transcendent. So: What is the new gender science, the science that no one understood or saw before, that has been uncovered recently and requires the overthrow of men and women? 

Where did this science come from? Can you cite it? How did this new science capture the imagination and sweep the nation so quickly? How is it that the populace never before understood that there is no actual distinction between men and women, and why did most secular Americans miss it as well, until very recently? Why did you previously believe that there were men and there were women? Because I think you would agree with me that in the recent past, within all of our memories, we never would have heard the answers we just heard on those videos.

Or, could it be that there is no breakthrough science to which you can point? Maybe this new ideology sweeping the nation is just that: an ideology. Maybe it's based in people's feelings more than in any science or in the understanding of biology/human nature? Perhaps gender ideology is no more than a socio-political movement that seeks to undo sexual norms and constraints so that we are all "free" to do what we want, when we want, with no judgement or opposition?

I guess I'm wanting to know if you changed your mind so suddenly because something concrete and empirical convinced you away from everything you (and everyone else) had previously known, or if you are simply going with the zeitgeist, which has sprung up from feelings and desires?

And why is there suddenly (again, like a flash) such a steep social, political, and even financial price to pay for those of us who hold to the axiomatic idea of male and female, the same one you yourself held, until your very recent "conversion"?

Thanks for considering jumping in the discussion. I want to understand the principle behind your stance, and how it came about so quickly.

The Death of Friendship: The heartbreaking fallout of the gay/transgender movements

All my children and grandchildren have gone back to home/school, and now I continue on with book writing and emails (help, Lord!). But this is something that needs discussing....


I came across this article (please, please, read the whole thing) and it has put words to the ache I have felt in my heart as I watch in real life even clearly non-homosexual, non-"gender fluid" teens suddenly begin to question their sexuality and even find an opposite-sex alter ego.

From "How to Stop Sexualizing Everything", emphasis mine:

The more friendship is misunderstood and ignored, the more people will identify as homosexual and bisexual. The more we condition our perceptions in a sexual way and the more children are exposed to sex even before they develop meaningful friendships, the less likely they will be able to separate healthy nonsexual feelings from sexual ones. Sex will become the defining feature of all their feelings. Eros will have slain phileo.

The death of true same-sex friendship.

I could have never imagined it even a few years ago, but now American children are expected -- expected -- to question their sexuality and "gender identity". They are not to assume they are heterosexual or male/female according to their very biology. They are not to be bound by those "societal constructs" which are now seen as destructive and repressive, even abusive.

On the heels of the first article, I read a brilliant analysis by (my new favorite author) Anthony Esolen, who writes in "A Requiem for Friendship":

Language is not language if it is not communal; it is a neat trick of political abracadabra to argue for an individual’s right to change the very medium of our thought and our social intercourse. If clothing is optional on a beach, then that is a nude beach. It cannot be a nude beach for some and an ordinary beach for others; to wear clothes at that beach at the very least means something that it had not meant before. If you may paint your house phosphorescent orange and violet, and you persuade a couple of your neighbors to do likewise, you no longer have what anybody would call a historic neighborhood. 

If all of Kate’s friends leap into bed with whatever male gives them a hearty dinner at Burger King and a round of miniature golf, and Kate chooses instead to kiss her date once on the cheek and leave him on the porch, she will suggest to everybody that she is a prude. She may be, or may not be; she may be more firmly in the grip of lust than they are, for all we know, and may just detest the boy. But her actions have connotations they did not use to have. 

Imagine a world wherein the taboo has been broken and incest is loudly and defiantly celebrated. Your wife’s unmarried brother puts his hand on your daughter’s shoulder. That gesture, once innocent, must now mean something, or at least suggest something. If the uncle were wise and considerate, he would not make it in the first place. You see a father hugging his teenage daughter as she leaves the car to go to school. The possibility flits before your mind. The language has changed, and the individual can do nothing about it. 

By now the reader must see the point. I might say that of all human actions there is nothing more powerfully public than what two consenting adults do with their bodies behind (we hope) closed doors. Open homosexuality, loudly and defiantly celebrated, changes the language for everyone. If a man throws his arm around another man’s waist, it is now a sign—whether he is on the political right or the left, whether he believes in biblical proscriptions of homosexuality or not. 

If a man cradles the head of his weeping friend, the shadow of suspicion must cross your mind. If a teenage boy is found skinny-dipping with another boy—not five of them, but two—it is the first thing you will think, and you will think it despite the obvious fact that until swim trunks were invented this was exactly how two men or boys would go for a swim. 

Because language is communal, the individual can choose to make a sign or not. He cannot determine what the sign is to mean, not to others, not to the one he signals, and not even to himself.

You see what he's getting at, right? You see what we have lost? What boys and young men have lost, especially? Please take the time to read it all.

The loss of pure, un-sexualized, un-suspicious same-sex friendship is a catastrophe. How on earth do we get it back?

The glaring errors of Everyday Feminism's "Menstruation Myths"

Nothing shocks me anymore. And yet, I still become speechless at the utter inanity that is out there. I saw the following cartoon the other day, which is just one segment of a much larger panel depicting a friendly little "uterus" discussing supposed "menstruation myths" in an apparent attempt to educate:

From everydayfeminism.com

Besides the growing realization that we have lost our ever-loving minds in this society and abandoned all human reason, there are two glaring problems I see here.

First, the science is all messed up.

For example, the reason that "transmen, non-binary, genderqueer folk" menstruate -- is because they are women!!

Yes, it's true! Though these people may "feel like men" in their minds, hearts, desires (and that's another issue altogether), their BIOLOGY, their very nature, is female. They are biological women. That is why they menstruate. They have a uterus, ovaries, fallopian tubes, an endometrium. These are women, menstruating as only women do.

This is science. This is biology.

As for "intersex" folks (also known as hermaphroditism), it happens in a fallen world that some children are born with ambiguous genitalia, perhaps having external organs that appear to be one sex, but a chromosomal make-up that indicates the other. This disorder is the result of a problem in the development of the child while still in the womb. If that child hits puberty and begins to menstruate, that is the female reproductive system at work.

But the bad science is only one part of the problem I see. Notice what happened in the middle there? The little girl mentions what her mom taught her, and then the friendly little uterus undermines parental authority by saying, directly, "No, Jo, your mom is wrong."

This is key to all the reprogramming going on in our culture today. Undermine the authority of the clearly unenlightened parents and inject into young minds the prevailing cultural ideology of "gender fluidity". In this backwards paradigm, mom and dad are the ones actually standing in the way of the true education of children, and these pesky parents can and must be gotten around. (Never mind that Catholic parents have a duty and thus a right to be the primary educators of their children, a duty that no state or culture can legitimately usurp.)

Finally, if you go to the entire panel (take a deep breath first!), you will note something that is glaring in its absence:

There is no mention of why the female body menstruates! 

I'm not sure how one can work up a whole panel of "facts" and "science" about menstruation and accompanying body parts with nary a word about WHY the body menstruates in the first place?

To understand ourselves fully as human beings, shouldn't we first understand our very human natures? This silly and inaccurate cartoon is devoid of any real thought, any real depth, any real truth. I look at the proliferation of such superficial, ideological, political fluff and I understand more and more why our youth are floating aimlessly, finding less and less satisfaction in life, disconnected from anything real, becoming more hopeless, and never quite understanding their own humanity.

Thankfully, there is an antidote to all of this insanity! Our Faith stands ready to respond with reason and reality and meaning and depth and joy!

Bring it on. Let's have that conversation about the nature of our bodies, the nature of our humanity, the meaning of our lives. Let's teach our children well, before a non-scientific, unreasonable, utilitarian talking cartoon uterus gets to them first.

Truth, goodness, and beauty wins every time.

My burning question about gender issues

Here's what I don't understand.

I have talked to and debated countless people who assure us that there are no real differences (outside of incidental genitals) between men and women. No difference in essence at all.

They have told us that it absolutely does not matter if a child has a father or not, or whether a child has a mother, because mothers and fathers are completely interchangeable. Mothers and fathers can perform the same functions, we are told. They can cook dinner and make a nice home and they can "love". Gender is meaningless.

They tell us that gender is fluid (unlike one's sex, which is the incidental genitals that I mentioned above), and that any perceived differences are social constructs. To think otherwise, they say, is narrow, bigoted, foolish, archaic.

And yet the same people -- the same people -- tell us that gender differences are so real, so important, so crucial, that people who merely think they are a different gender have a right to surgically mutilate their genitals to get their incidental physical bodies to conform to what they feel in their minds, what they feel is their essence. That to surgically alter their bodies is, quite literally, a matter of life and death, so much so that even prisoners have the right to have taxpayers pay for their gender reassignment surgeries, and small children who are conflicted about their gender vs. genitals need to be put on hormone treatments without delay.

So, which is it? Is one's gender a matter of such essence and import that it means life or death, or is it something so insignificant that mother and father, bride and groom, woman and man are indifferent, meaningless designations that must be ignored or done away with?

Please, I'm sincerely asking: Which is it? And if it can be both, then how?