Bruce Jenner says he’s a woman. To prove our enlightenment, must we agree?
In Hans Christian Andersen’s fable "The Emperor’s New Clothes," the wannabe elite fell all over themselves to compliment their stark-nude emperor’s fabulous attire after being told his clothing was invisible only to the unenlightened or unfit for society. Today, the tale, first published in 1837, seems oddly prescient.
Progressive activists and their allies in the mainstream media are right now telling us that only the unenlightened or unfit for society fail to see that 65-year-old Bruce Jenner – a world record-setting gold medalist in the 1976 Olympics’ men’s decathlon and father of six who recently grew out his hair, took a cocktail of hormone pills, purchased $70,000 in facial feminization surgery and a pair of silicone D-cups, and changed his name to "Caitlyn" – is now a bona fide woman.
At the time of his “coming out” interview with Vanity Fair magazine, Jenner still possessed the genitalia of a man. (Tabloids have reported that he has since undergone surgery to remove his male sexual organs and make his genital area appear female instead, although his publicist will not confirm the rumors.) For the rest of his life, he will carry the chromosomal makeup of a man. But biology, they tell us, is inconsequential. So is history. That Bruce Jenner has spent the last 65 years living a man’s life as a husband, father, stepfather and world-class athlete is irrelevant.
What’s important, they say, is believing what we’re told.
Myka Fox of Distractify sums up the popular orthodoxy this way: “By appearing on the cover of Vanity Fair and asking for everyone to call her Caitlyn, Jenner announced she was a woman,” Fox wrote. “Bruce was a ‘he’ yesterday. Caitlyn is a ‘she’ today. It’s really that simple, and continuing to use male pronouns for her is making the statement ‘I reject you.’”
Simple? Hardly. Not even Jenner himself can keep it straight, according to Vanity Fair’s Buzz Bissinger, who spent more than 100 hours interviewing him for July’s cover story.
Asked whether he is sensitive to so-called “pronoun confusion” – the most charitable interpretation trans activists allow for the use of biologically correct pronouns in place of preferred pronouns (more commonly, they chalk it up to “bigotry,” “hate” or “transphobia,” depending on who made the faux pas) – Jenner says it would be hypocritical for him to worry about it. “I don’t really get hung up,” he told Bissinger. “A guy came in the other day and I was fully dressed [as a woman]—it’s just habit, I said, ‘Hi, Bruce here,’ and I went, Oh f—, it ain’t Bruce, I was screwing up doing it.”
Meanwhile, Jenner’s mother, Esther, has publicly said that she will continue to call her son “Bruce,” because “I have to … [h]is father and I named him that.”
While the thought police have, for the moment, let Bruce and his mother off the hook for their sins against semantic orthodoxy, they have been working overtime to condemn anyone else who fails to toe the verbal line. There’s even an automated Twitter account programmed to do nothing but scour the mammoth social media site for posts that use the pronoun “he” in conjunction with Jenner’s name, and call the posters out:
.@OkiesRule *Alarm sounds* It’s she, not he.
— She not he (@she_not_he)
June 4, 2015
Big Brother is watching, indeed. We have always been at war with Eastasia. And “Caitlyn” Jenner has always been a woman.
We’re now living in a society where people can change their identity on a whim, and everyone else is expected to fall in line and forget history, or pay the price. But what about the cost to everyone around these unfortunate souls? What about the indignities being suffered by Bruce Jenner’s children – the four normal, non-Hollywood ones, not the fame-hungry Kardashian clan – as they watch their 65-year-old father expose far too much of his aging, surgically reshaped body on the cover of a national magazine, wearing nothing but a women’s bustier, his manhood tucked discreetly between his thighs? What about the discomfort his son Brandon experienced when his dad showed off his new store-bought breasts by flashing him – reportedly prompting Brandon to shout, “Whoa! I’m still your son!”?
In short, why is the entire world expected to pretend this situation is normal to make Bruce Jenner comfortable, when he has expressed exactly zero concern for anyone else’s comfort – least of all that of his own children?
The drama surrounding Jenner’s transition plays out across the nation on a smaller scale every time someone decides to reject the cards biology dealt them. Families are torn apart as children lose their mom or dad, or parents lose their son or daughter. “Better trans than dead,” goes the retort, and of course, that’s true. But transitioning is neither a guarantee of lasting happiness nor a preventive measure against suicide. In fact, studies have shown that one out of five post-operative transsexuals “deeply regret” their sex change. Up to 18 percent will attempt suicide.
When an emaciated young woman suffering from anorexia tells us she is fat, we don’t show her to the plus size department and hand her diet pills. When someone suffering from severe body dysphoria tells us his arm or leg isn’t supposed to be there, we don’t rush him in for an amputation or give him a chainsaw. If a person is deluded into thinking he’s Barack Obama, we don’t let him anywhere near the Oval Office. But for some reason, our society has chosen to treat gender dysphoria differently. We reinforce the delusion instead of helping people accept the reality of their own biology.
Meanwhile, the rest of us are expected to carry on as if nothing is wrong, or even out of the ordinary. Schools and businesses are forced to permit biological males to use female-only toileting and shower facilities, regardless of how women and girls may feel about it. Female athletes are forced to compete against biological males, regardless of the added risk to their safety. And the thought police are ever on the march, seeking to ruin the lives and careers of those who dare to question the sanity of any of it. Just look at the glee over the Josh Duggar scandal – with trans activists openly celebrating a tragic case of mishandled childhood sexual abuse because it made critics of their agenda look hypocritical.
The most important thing, according to these misguided activists, is that we all keep up the charade, even if it hurts people … even if it kills them. After Jenner emerged from his facial surgery, Vanity Fair reports, he had a panic attack – his first ever. “What did I just do? What did I just do to myself?” Jenner recalled thinking at the time.
His worry was short-lived. The thought police came quickly to the rescue, ready to stamp out any doubts. Reported Vanity Fair, a counselor from the “Los Angeles Gender Center” rushed to the house to reassure Jenner, telling him that panic is often induced by pain medication. (That obviously explains the raging pain medication abuse epidemic in this country. People just love panic attacks.) Second-guessing the choice to surgically transform one’s body, the counselor said, is human, but temporary.
Perhaps lying to Jenner was the compassionate thing to do. After all, what’s done is done, and I suppose the truth – that he just irreversibly damaged his own body in the search of a happiness he’s not likely to find in this world – would have been too cruel. But it’s not too late for others. Let’s stop celebrating the Emperor’s New Clothes, before far too many more are hurt.
