Today, we pause for comic relief.
We are sitting in the waiting lounge for KLM in Buenos Aires. Across from us is a pair of love birds. In what is called an ‘autumn romance’, the couple seem to be in their 50s. He is bald. Paunchy. She, bleached blonde…with skin that has gotten wrinkly, perhaps from too much tanning. It is probably the second go-around for both of them.
Are they on their way to Europe for…a honeymoon? We don’t know, but they can’t keep their hands off each other. After exchanging tender kisses…longing glances…and caresses, finally, they both sat in a single chair, so they would be closer together. And now, oh my…she has put her leopard leotarded leg over his. They are cuddling.
This is going on in the Business Class lounge…and why not? It’s the oldest business on the planet. So, now we turn to what a strange business it is. Independent News reports: ‘University “professor” claims there is no BIOLOGICAL gender’:
We watched the short video. Sure enough, a person claiming to be a professor — an expert! — at West Virginia University denied a biological basis for sex. ‘It’s a social construct’, she(?) insisted.
Blind designers
If you close your eyes and hold your breath long enough, you can believe almost anything. No one doubts that there is a lot of social constructing going on…but there is something more, too. No human architect designed man and woman.
Caught in the web of clickbait that passes for news, we watched another short video. This one took place at Portland State University, where professors were trying to hold a discussion on the subject. What is the difference between men and women, they asked. But when a female professor dared to reveal that ‘men are generally taller than women’ the students staged a noisy walkout.
Another professor appealed to reason, vainly trying to find common ground with the students:
‘This is a university, if we can’t talk about this here…where can we talk about it?’
No matter. The young folks didn’t walk to talk about it at all. They were appalled. Tallness doesn’t seem like a ‘social construct’. But why bring it up? They had no need to notice anything, because they had already found the True Religion. In their state of exalted piety, the ‘science was settled’. They knew that there was no intrinsic difference between men and women…and nothing that couldn’t be fixed with ‘hormones and surgery’. That’s the one unassailable tenet of the new faith. And heretics will be cancelled, deplatformed, defunded…and burned at the stake.
Words of wisdom
‘You know, Don Bill’, began Elizabeth with the playful wisdom of the distaff side of the family, ‘[a niece] has announced that she is gay. She has a girlfriend she refers to as “they”. And she takes it very seriously. If you want to know how her girlfriend is doing, you’re supposed to say: “How is they?” Of course, you don’t want to say anything so ridiculous, so you don’t ask’.
‘What happened to her?’
‘I don’t know. She seemed perfectly normal until recently. But then she had a friend who announced that she was a lesbian. And then it just seemed to become the latest thing…all the girls wanted to be lesbian. I think she’s doing it to be cool.
‘In this case, lesbianism may really be a “social construct”…a kind of fashion statement, I guess. And it saves her the trouble of trying to get along with a man. I just hope she’ll be happy. But the thing is, if she doesn’t form a bond with a man when she is young…she may never be able to. Or it may be too late to have children. Time is not a social construct. Neither is having children.
‘Nothing wrong with choosing not to have children…a lot of women don’t have children and they’re perfectly happy. But it will be sad if she turns 45 and realizes she’s missed something important. She may feel like she’s been chasing a mirage…that she’s been the victim of a lot of faddish thinking.
‘She wouldn’t be the first. I remember, growing up in the ‘70s, we had plenty of opportunities to ruin our lives. We went to parties in New York where they handed out cocaine. We were expected to have casual sex in college. And then, educated women were encouraged to act like men; we were the Hillary Clinton Generation. We were supposed to put our careers first…become judges and scientists, not “stay home and bake cookies,” as Hillary put it.
‘This idea that men and women should do the same things is obvious nonsense. We get together because we are different, not because we are the same. I’ll remember the grandchildren’s birthdays, as you put it; you remember Boog Powell’s batting average from 1966. It’s not always easy; we’re always making compromises. But that’s the world we live in.
‘And maybe these young people really can create a better world, but I wouldn’t bet on it.’
Like the do on the Discovery Channel
Chasing mirages is what we all do. Wealth, power, status — the usual. Then, getting older, both desire and capacity fade. No more fast cars. No more conspicuous wealth. No more muscle shirts or bikinis. Instead, we give away our wealth and power, and end up dying in a nursing home in Florida, penniless, dressed in a pair of slippers, khaki pants, a plaid shirt and a grey cardigan. On the wall behind us is a photo of us with the family when we were still compos mentis.
Something to look forward to!
In the meantime, we have mirages to chase. As we’ve described in these pages, most of our vanities — if not all of them — come from an innate drive to procreate. That’s not a social construct either. It’s why we exist. Almost everything we do — from writing books to breast augmentation — is meant to show what good mates we would be. That’s why we want to be ‘cool’. But what a strange world it is. Women used to check themselves into convents. Some groups — such as the Shakers — swore off sex altogether. Now, young women ‘come out as gay’. They do these things because they think they are ‘cool’. But what a way to procreate!
When it comes to gender bending, Newsweek Magazine must be the coolest…or dumbest…of all. There have been two mass shootings lately. In one, a ‘trans’ person — a ‘they’ — shot up a school, killing six people. This was a real man-bites-dog story. ‘Trans’ people are a tiny segment of the population; so, this single incident marked them, statistically, as one of the most dangerous sub-groups in the country. In another incident, a ‘man’ shot up a bank. On the first incident, the press seemed reluctant to linger. It didn’t suit the favoured narrative. But as to the second, Newsweek went nuts. Here is the once-respectable pillar of the US media establishment: ‘Louisville Shooter Connor Sturgeon’s Pronouns Spark Outrage’:
‘The suspect was identified as 23-year-old Connor Sturgeon, a former employee at the Old National Bank, where the shooting occurred, Louisville Metro Police Department officials said Monday. The shooting left at least four people dead and nine injured and comes just a few weeks after the school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, that killed six, including three children.
‘Before his identification by police, social media users shared screenshots of a LinkedIn profile associated with Sturgeon that showed the use of the pronouns he/him, which has brought some criticism online.’
Selective outrage
The outrage that Newsweek reports comes from the fact the accused referred to himself in the generally accepted way. In English, a man is described as ‘he’ or ‘him’, depending on how it is used in a sentence. But using ‘he/him’ as personal pronouns should have tipped off the authorities (Newsweek implies)…that the man was a mass murderer:
‘Sebastian Gorka, a conservative commentator and ex-adviser to former President Donald Trump, wrote on Twitter that Sturgeon was “proudly displaying his ‘pronouns’ online” and called this a “#RedFlag.”
‘Gunther Eagleman wrote, “Pronouns kill… Louisville bank mass shooter Connor Sturgeon self identified as a He/Him.”’
What to make of it? We don’t know…but with so much BS in the popular press, all we can say is ‘good luck’ to the happy couple in the waiting lounge. It may not be the first time around the track for either of them. But maybe this time, they’ll reach the finish line.
Regards,
 |
Bill Bonner,
For The Daily Reckoning Australia
