Gender ideology has a reality problem. Just look at the latest cover story for New York Magazine, in which the trans-identified writer Andrea Long Chu denounced reality itself, writing that “the belief that we have a moral duty to accept reality just because it is real is, I think, a fine definition of nihilism.”
Well, that is a … novel philosophical assertion.
It is tempting to dismiss Chu’s denunciation of reality as an insane gambit by a flailing ideology, but declaring war against reality might just be crazy enough to work. This approach provides the collapsing gender ideology movement a way out of myriad difficulties — instead of relying on shoddy science to support medical “transition,” including for children, gender ideologues can instead appeal to a supposed right to physical self-determination and modification, even for children. Liberals like the idea of liberating mankind from the limits of our humanity, and so even as Chu retreats from the usual arguments of gender ideology, he invites the left to join in this more radical vision.
This effort to find a better justification for gender ideology pushes Chu to argue that it was a mistake for the left to hang “trans rights on the thin peg of gender identity.” This approach won some victories, but it “failed to form a coherent moral account of why someone’s gender identity should justify the actual biological interventions that make up gender-affirming care.”
Source:
The Federalist