This is what I don’t understand: I was brought up/educated that sexual preference is not a choice, but that it is determined from birth and that it was immutable. Given that, it is wildly inappropriate and unfair to condemn or criticize a person for their sexual preference. Given that, things that attempt to “correct” or I’ve even heard the term “deprogram” someone’s sexual preference to better fit with a society’s or a religion’s values is not only wrong-headed but incredibly cruel. That’s a big part of why I’ve always gotten along swimmingly with all my gay friends, roommates, et cetera. Fine.
But now I’m being told that gender itself is not a constant, and that one can simply say they identify as whatever they want, so that if a man who has lived his entire life as a heterosexual man decides at age 53 that he identifies as a woman, and a lesbian at that, then he is legally a woman, and is entitled to the feminine pronoun and use of the women’s restroom. Which, okay, but this creates such alarming logical incongruities as to be problematic to the point of impossibility. In the interest of brevity (and me maybe getting more than 2 hours of sleep for a change), I will simply list the top two and leave it there for tonight. Here goes:
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i don’t think one can have it both ways: if gender is not a constant, and is not determined by genitals or chromosomes or irrefutable science, then how can sexual preference (which is literally preference and not at all provable, dictated, or detectable by chromosomes or science) not be equally as malleable?
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If gender is dictated solely by one’s own choice or how one “identifies,” does that not render all of the struggles for women’s rights, as well as gay and lesbian rights pointless and moot? For example, why bother with marches and protests and petitions for women to have the same exact rights, freedoms, and opportunities as men if the aggrieved women can simply declare themselves men? If one half of a lesbian couple suddenly identifies as a man, and the formerly gay couple thus begin living as a straight couple, then what has been the point of the last 60+ years of struggling for LGBT rights? And is not that grouping itself now problematic, I.e., should the T agenda be grouped with the LGB agenda, or are they not completely existentially different and thus incompatible if the T is variable but the LGB is fixed?
N.P.:”Pretty When You Cry” – VAST
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