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It’s 2022.
So of course, in the midst of war in Europe, possible nuclear confrontation, a horrendous dragflation economy with spiraling inflation, food and baby formula shortages, astronomical gas prices, brazen crimes sprees, record importation of lethal synthetic drugs, and mass slaughters by psychopaths who were on the radar of authorities, Congress has to spend time…
…defining what a woman is.
But trans activists and their allies have unfortunately made it necessary, by practically criminalizing the accurate perception of reality by supposedly free citizens.
So it is that Republicans led by Debbie Lesko (R-AZ) have introduced H. Res. 1136, a bill that would legally define a “woman.”
The bill states:
“males and females possess unique and immutable biological difference that manifest prior to birth and increase as they age and experience puberty” and that “biological differences between the sexes can expose females to more harm than males from specific forms of violence, including sexual violence.”
The bill also declares that “biological differences between the sexes mean that only females may get pregnant, give birth, and breastfeed children.”
The introduction of the legislation is meant to counter trends harmful to women and society in general, which have seen biological men allowed to use women’s restrooms, and compete in women’s athletics as “trans-women”.
Increasingly, people in the workplace and even young students in classrooms have faced legal jeopardy for not using the “preferred pronouns” of others, even though it violates their own right to perceive and mediate reality as they deem accurate.
In Virginia, for example, students who use pronouns that “mis-gender” others may face expulsion from school and other penalties. Wisconsin middle-schoolers have been accused of “sexual harrassment” on similiar grounds.
The House bill lists a number of reasons for its necessity:
“[T]here are important reasons to distinguish between the sexes with respect to athletics, prisons, domestic violence shelters, restrooms, and other areas, particularly where biology, safety, and privacy are implicated.”
Basic Logic, Strange Times
Providing unique names to objects and phenomena which have fundamentally unique distinctions from other things, is a large part of the way language helps humans mediate reality.
This has long been understood by Western philosophy. Unfortunately, serious study of philosophy and logic no longer seems to be a part of “woke” curriculums.
Ignoring and defying reality, unsurprisingly, has not come without deleterious consequences.
The harms of the trans movement have gone beyond distorting reality in important ways, as harmful as that is in itself.
Very young children are now undergoing hormone treatments which are objectively harmful, given their biological sex, and even worse, being “treated” with surgeries that literally destroy their genitals, removing testicles and breast tissue, creating “wombs” by opening colons, and other travesties.
Such surgeries are irreversible. And social media is littered with stories of people who regret decisions made at an early age, in a vacuum of rational, principled societal guidance.
Meanwhile parents in Canada and the U.S. who have objected to their children being fast-tracked into gender transitions, often at the recommendation of school officials and medical authorities, have faced penalties, including loss of parental rights.
The new House legislation represents a step in countering these radical and disturbing societal trends.
It comes following the introduction last month of a “Women’s Bill of Rights” by several advocacy groups, including Independent Women’s Voice, Independent Women’s Law Center and the Women’s Liberation Front.
The document called for reserving “biological sex as a distinct legal category.”
According to Fox News, the groups composed the document as a result of their concern that trans activists and others are distorting and disputing the “biological basis of womanhood.”
Biden Administration officials have claimed before Congress that people have a blanket right to “self-define” themselves as women or men, and that society is then beholden to treat them as such.
The Biden Administration has put forward executive orders and legislation that criminalizes those who would accurately recognize the fundamental differences between the sexes by daring to name them, as has been done for all human history up until the last half decade.
The administration has also sought to provide easier and even government funded “gender transition” therapies and surgeries.
Of course, there is no legal or real-world unlimited right for people to self-define themselves. For example, a person who happens to be 5’8” tall cannot demand to be designated as 6’0” on their driver’s license.
These days, people dressing up for Halloween are not allowed to “misappropriate” regalia of other ethnicities and cultures, even for a party, in fun.
The distortions of the times are serious indeed. It’s just unfortunate that with so many other serious problems to confront, the self-inflicted wounds of things like absurd COVID policies and “transgenderism” have managed to add to the calamity.
Shakespeare once wrote, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.”
Shakespeare’s observation might be lost on “Generation Woke.” But it would do well for classrooms to revisit some Shakespeare, Platonian logic, and other apt wisdom and sayings from antiquity, including that one about “fiddling while Rome burns.”
For more, see “THE NEW LOST GENERATION” (26 Apr 2022).