A question of fact
Trofim Lysenko was a famous scientist in the Soviet Union who announced that he could change spring wheat into winter wheat by immersing it in ice water. His discovery was hailed as a means of increasing agricultural production. But it didn’t pan out. Spring wheat and winter wheat are genetically distinct and you can’t change their genes with environmental factors.
The reason that Lysenko’s announcement was greeted with such fanfare, however, went beyond a hoped-for triumph in agricultural research. You see, Marxism-Leninism insisted that it was not merely a system of values, a political or economic theory: it was science. It was FACT. And at the core of Marxism-Leninism is the idea that you can change human nature by manipulating the environment in which people live. Changing the nature of wheat by manipulating its environment was seen as proof of that core assumption.
Remember that. Communism isn’t just bad because it’s ethically bad or politically unfree or favors this group vs. that group. Communism fails at its own first premise. It claims to be founded upon scientific fact, but everything it claims can be proven to be wrong. Lysenko’s hokum was just the latest in a long line of wishful statements issued by violent people pursuing their nasty little revolution. By the time the Soviet Union fell, everyone with a brain inside the country knew that Marxism-Leninism was bullsh*t, even as they continued to study its theory assiduously (in order to not get in trouble with their overseers).
Comes now a new revolution, with a new revelation: men can be(come) women, women can be(come) men. Male and female – which the new revolutionaries call gender, but which is more properly called biological sex – are supposed to be social constructs. There is no actual distinction between them, at least not one that can’t be manipulated. So, if you want to be the opposite sex, or feel as if you “are” the opposite sex, you can block your puberty, take opposite sex hormones, have “reassignment” surgery, and so on. If you say that’s not possible, you will be shouted down, hounded from your place of work, doxed on the internet, and maybe have ugly crowds follow you around. (It’s been known to happen.)
Now, there have always been people uncomfortable with their bodies, or who wished to affect the dress and manners of the other sex, or who got a thrill by dressing as the other sex, or who were just eccentric or wanted to shock others. The motivations for wanting to present oneself as the other sex are many and variable, and sometimes elicit a great deal of sympathy from others. But can you really “transition?” Can you become the other sex, really? Or can you “be born in the wrong body” in some metaphysical way? This is not, at bottom, an ethical argument, but a scientific one, and depends on nobody’s preferences. Either you can or you can’t change sex.
The satisfaction of trans folk with their new identity, while an interesting question, doesn’t settle the debate. Especially does it not settle the debate when only those who claim to be satisfied with their transition are allowed to hold the floor, while those who are unhappy with their transition, or decide to “detransition” or seek what is disparagingly called “conversion therapy” (i.e., talking with someone about how to come to terms with what cannot be changed) are denied their voice. The detransitioners are as dangerous to the revolution as the non-trans skeptics, and neither must be listened to; rather, we must have more “gender affirming care” for younger and younger people.
Well, to quote Horace, Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret: “You can chuck nature out with a pitchfork, but it’ll come back all the same.” The cheerleaders for the fluidity of gender have bet the farm on a scientific proposition, not a value proposition. And what will happen when a sufficient number of horror stories from those hustled into “gender affirming care” become impossible to sweep under the carpet any longer? When those who bought the snake oil report that their lives were ruined, their bodies mutilated, their sexual function made all but impossible and (if anybody cares) their despair increased intolerably by those who claimed to be their friends and protectors. By their parents! in many cases, and by their doctors. The damages sought will be in the tens of billions of dollars, but nobody will ever be able to calculate the heartache, the suicides of despair, the chaos made of their lives. Nor will anybody really ever be able to make it right.
For those who are happy with their transitions, I have nothing to say. You do you. But there is a mounting number of testimonies of people who are realizing that they were just normal-teenage-miserable and they got swept up into something that destroyed their lives. And they are not happy. What will we say to them?
The teenage girl at the heart of the Salem witchcraft hysteria finally repented of her sin for starting it all and as a middle-aged woman sought to be forgiven. The families of those who were put to death because of her testimony and that of others did an amazing thing: they did forgive her. But no one could bring the dead back to life or make the evil of those days as if it had never been. That, too, was ultimately a question of fact: whether what the teenage girls claimed was possible – and whether “spectral evidence” could be admitted in a court of law to prove it.
Those who claim that “male” and “female” are mere social or psychological constructs are denying a provable scientific fact: that our sex is encoded in every cell of our bodies. How we feel about that may vary; but the chromosomes are what they are. Those who deny that reality and smoothly assure unhappy people, young and old, that “transitioning” will make their lives better – and especially those who abuse their role as physicians and surgeons to prescribe drugs their patients don’t need and surgeries that cannot be reversed – are sure they are acting on the basis of provable fact. But what if it isn’t a fact, and will never be a fact, and we are someday going to have a reckoning over what we have done?
Back to Horace, who concludes his aphorism with these words: et mala perrumpet furtem fastidia victrix. You can chuck nature out with a pitchfork, but it’ll come back all the same, “and will be victorious over your ignorant confident scorn.”
The reason that Lysenko’s announcement was greeted with such fanfare, however, went beyond a hoped-for triumph in agricultural research. You see, Marxism-Leninism insisted that it was not merely a system of values, a political or economic theory: it was science. It was FACT. And at the core of Marxism-Leninism is the idea that you can change human nature by manipulating the environment in which people live. Changing the nature of wheat by manipulating its environment was seen as proof of that core assumption.
Remember that. Communism isn’t just bad because it’s ethically bad or politically unfree or favors this group vs. that group. Communism fails at its own first premise. It claims to be founded upon scientific fact, but everything it claims can be proven to be wrong. Lysenko’s hokum was just the latest in a long line of wishful statements issued by violent people pursuing their nasty little revolution. By the time the Soviet Union fell, everyone with a brain inside the country knew that Marxism-Leninism was bullsh*t, even as they continued to study its theory assiduously (in order to not get in trouble with their overseers).
Comes now a new revolution, with a new revelation: men can be(come) women, women can be(come) men. Male and female – which the new revolutionaries call gender, but which is more properly called biological sex – are supposed to be social constructs. There is no actual distinction between them, at least not one that can’t be manipulated. So, if you want to be the opposite sex, or feel as if you “are” the opposite sex, you can block your puberty, take opposite sex hormones, have “reassignment” surgery, and so on. If you say that’s not possible, you will be shouted down, hounded from your place of work, doxed on the internet, and maybe have ugly crowds follow you around. (It’s been known to happen.)
Now, there have always been people uncomfortable with their bodies, or who wished to affect the dress and manners of the other sex, or who got a thrill by dressing as the other sex, or who were just eccentric or wanted to shock others. The motivations for wanting to present oneself as the other sex are many and variable, and sometimes elicit a great deal of sympathy from others. But can you really “transition?” Can you become the other sex, really? Or can you “be born in the wrong body” in some metaphysical way? This is not, at bottom, an ethical argument, but a scientific one, and depends on nobody’s preferences. Either you can or you can’t change sex.
The satisfaction of trans folk with their new identity, while an interesting question, doesn’t settle the debate. Especially does it not settle the debate when only those who claim to be satisfied with their transition are allowed to hold the floor, while those who are unhappy with their transition, or decide to “detransition” or seek what is disparagingly called “conversion therapy” (i.e., talking with someone about how to come to terms with what cannot be changed) are denied their voice. The detransitioners are as dangerous to the revolution as the non-trans skeptics, and neither must be listened to; rather, we must have more “gender affirming care” for younger and younger people.
Well, to quote Horace, Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret: “You can chuck nature out with a pitchfork, but it’ll come back all the same.” The cheerleaders for the fluidity of gender have bet the farm on a scientific proposition, not a value proposition. And what will happen when a sufficient number of horror stories from those hustled into “gender affirming care” become impossible to sweep under the carpet any longer? When those who bought the snake oil report that their lives were ruined, their bodies mutilated, their sexual function made all but impossible and (if anybody cares) their despair increased intolerably by those who claimed to be their friends and protectors. By their parents! in many cases, and by their doctors. The damages sought will be in the tens of billions of dollars, but nobody will ever be able to calculate the heartache, the suicides of despair, the chaos made of their lives. Nor will anybody really ever be able to make it right.
For those who are happy with their transitions, I have nothing to say. You do you. But there is a mounting number of testimonies of people who are realizing that they were just normal-teenage-miserable and they got swept up into something that destroyed their lives. And they are not happy. What will we say to them?
The teenage girl at the heart of the Salem witchcraft hysteria finally repented of her sin for starting it all and as a middle-aged woman sought to be forgiven. The families of those who were put to death because of her testimony and that of others did an amazing thing: they did forgive her. But no one could bring the dead back to life or make the evil of those days as if it had never been. That, too, was ultimately a question of fact: whether what the teenage girls claimed was possible – and whether “spectral evidence” could be admitted in a court of law to prove it.
Those who claim that “male” and “female” are mere social or psychological constructs are denying a provable scientific fact: that our sex is encoded in every cell of our bodies. How we feel about that may vary; but the chromosomes are what they are. Those who deny that reality and smoothly assure unhappy people, young and old, that “transitioning” will make their lives better – and especially those who abuse their role as physicians and surgeons to prescribe drugs their patients don’t need and surgeries that cannot be reversed – are sure they are acting on the basis of provable fact. But what if it isn’t a fact, and will never be a fact, and we are someday going to have a reckoning over what we have done?
Back to Horace, who concludes his aphorism with these words: et mala perrumpet furtem fastidia victrix. You can chuck nature out with a pitchfork, but it’ll come back all the same, “and will be victorious over your ignorant confident scorn.”