David QuinnThe world of sexual politics is getting more and more complicated, writes David Quinn
The case of Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner has made the complexity of sexual politics even more obvious than usual.
Jenner is a former Olympic athlete, arguably one of the greatest America has produced. He won the gold medal in the Decathlon in the 1976 Olympics. He has had a varied and unexpected career since then to put it very mildly.
For the last few years, for example, he has been best known as the family patriarch in Keeping Up with the Kardashians, a ‘reality’ TV show.
The most famous member of that clan is Kim. Bruce is married to Kim’s mother, Kris. In other words, until very recently Bruce has been Kim’s stepfather.
Bruce and Kris also have two children of their own together.
Bruce is no longer Kim’s stepfather because he and Kris have divorced. In fact, Bruce is no longer even the father of his own natural children anymore because Bruce has ‘transitioned’ into being a woman.
He is now to be known as Caitlyn and the male pronoun is no longer to be used. He has become a ‘she’.
Dangerous territory
I am now stepping into very dangerous territory. What pronoun should I use? Physically speaking it is actually impossible to change from one sex to another. You cannot change your DNA. A man cannot grow a uterus or any other female reproductive organs, although a man can grow breasts using female hormones.
A woman cannot grow the male reproductive organ.
Artificial ones can be fashioned but they remain that; artificial.
Nonetheless, does politeness mean we should use the female pronoun when referring to Jenner?
Maybe it does, or maybe I’m just too wary of the abuse that inevitably awaits anyone who does not observe the politically correct protocols of modern sexual and identity politics.
In any event, so far as he/she is concerned, Bruce Jenner is now a woman and goes by the name ‘Caitlyn’.
‘She’ has now been featured on the cover of Vanity Fair in the United States looking about as glamorous as it is possible for a 65-year-old former male Olympic athlete (and father and husband) to be.
Caitlyn is now famous in her own right (I am now using the female pronoun without the scare quotes for the sake of politeness). She is no longer an add-on to the Kardashian family, an extra in the cast. She is now a star in her own right again, just as she was back in the 1970s when she was a male gold medal winner at the Olympics.
Jenner’s transformation from Bruce to Caitlyn has been met for the most part with thunderous applause and lots of affirmations and hallelujahs.
Why is that? It is because as an act of ‘personal autonomy’, ‘self-empowerment’ and ‘self-actualisation’ turning from one sex into another is very hard to beat.
It is the ultimate triumph of mind over matter. Your body, your DNA may say that you are male. But your mind is telling you that you are female. You then choose to go with your mind, not your body. If your mind says you are female then you are female.
This will, of course, put you at odds with your body. Your mind is telling you that you are female (or male) despite the fact that your body is male (or female). What should you do?
The common practice until quite recently has been to undergo an operation to have your male (or female) body parts removed and replaced with artificial sex organs.
It would seem to make sense to try and get your body to conform with what your mind is telling you.
These operations, however, are extremely radical involving in the case of men, castration.
So a growing number of people now leave their bodies as they are and live out their lives as female even though they are in a fully male body, or as male even though they are in a fully female body.
Our Government is about to pass a law for transgendered people that will allow them to be officially recognised by the State as either male or female depending on their choice, without having to change their body or to be recognised by a doctor as being a transgendered person.
In other words, the Irish State will soon be changing birth certificates etc to say that someone like a Bruce Jenner, who may have fathered several children, is and always was a woman, even though their body is fully that of a man.
In our primary schools, children as young as four are already being taught about transgendered people. With the full approval of teachers’ union, the INTO, they are being told a transgendered person is: “A girl who feels like they are a boy/A woman who feels like they are a man. A boy who feels like they are a girl/A man who feels like they are a woman.”
At that age, shouldn’t they really be learning their ABCs?
I’ll leave you with one last complication. Jenner is being attacked by some feminists for becoming too stereotypically female. Why have long hair and make-up? Why wear a dress?
Doesn’t Jenner know that gender roles (the way we dress, behave and so on) are purely the result of how we are raised?
To really defy gender norms, some feminists say, Jenner should not conform to female stereotypes by dressing and behaving in ways society has conditioned females to dress and behave.
The feminists are now being attacked as ‘transphobic’ because of this. The sex revolution is starting to devour its own.