Generally speaking, there are two ways to live. You can either live in accordance with reality, or you can live in accordance with your feelings. Either way, reality defines your existence. Civilization has risen and retraced in direct relation to how society has embraced reality—medicine instead of magic, science instead of divination.
Among the signs that we are entering a period of cultural retracement is the modern embrace of transsexualism. It used to be that, if a man called himself a woman, he was regarded as mentally ill. Such judgment was more than pejorative. Mental health is the capacity to function appropriately in the context of reality. If you can’t first acknowledge reality, than you certainly can’t function in it. A man who thinks himself a woman cannot live as what he actually is, and is therefore not well.
National Review provides us with an analogous example, a Norwegian woman who believes that she is a cat. Her reasoning, or lack thereof, is remarkably similar to that of a transsexual.
“I have been a cat all my life … I realized I was a cat when I was 16 when doctors and psychologists found out what was ‘the thing’ with me,” the 20-year old woman, who goes by the name “Nano,” explained in a YouTube video. “Under my birth there was a genetic defect,” she continued.
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“It’s also obvious that I’m a cat when I start purring and meowing,” she added. “And walking around on four legs and stuff like that.”
She is a cat because she feels like one. She was born that way, she claims. She also acts like a cat, and therefore must be one, obviously. Nevermind genetic or physical reality. Her feelings determine her truth.
On what basis can we reject her claim if we accept that of a transsexual? What’s the difference?
South Park had something to say about this a few seasons back, as seen on the next page.
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