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Sex, Violence, and Marriage
I’ve been engaged in a pair of interesting conversations lately with people whose views are, shall we say, somewhere to the left of my own — and yes, I know that’s a pretty big crowd — about the meanings of words. Specifically, we’ve been talking about “sex” and “violence.”
The left is in the process of redefining sex to mean something other, something broader and less precise, than male or female. They do this by pointing to differences in the way human sexual traits are distributed, claiming that abnormal combinations of traits represent new sexes, rather than merely variations in distribution. (They also cite biological abnormalities, the rare genetic mutations that cause some people to actually be sexually ambiguous in their physiology.)
There’s a point to this redefinition. By stirring up mud and obscuring what we all pretty well know about normal sexual distinctions, they can marginalize those distinctions. That’s important, because their goal is to say that all differences of behavior and situation are the result of social constructs, arbitrary rules made up (by men) to achieve a social objective (the subjugation of women). Once biology is rejected, all that remains is injustice.
(Of course, injustice can occur in spite of biology, and routinely does. But it’s easier to find injustice everywhere if we rule out a biological basis for behavior.)
Something similar is going on with the word “violence.” The left would like it to be expanded to include the expression of ideas that make some people uncomfortable. Once again, medical science is pressed into service, in this case, to demonstrate that people experience real physiological responses to stress — including stress caused by hearing ideas they don’t like.
Since stress is bad for us, it follows — in the left’s reasoning — that ideas that elicit a stress response might also be labeled violence, and so either prevented or, as in the case of the hoodlums currently rioting in the streets of Seattle and Portland, met with actual, physical violence. And so Antifa argues that the real physical violence it uses each night to destroy property and hurt people is simply a justifiable response to what it claims are bad ideas coming from the other side.
“Words are violence” justifies hurting people who say things you don’t like, and that’s exactly what we’re seeing.
I mentioned “marriage” in the title because redefining marriage was an early goal — funny how long ago that seems — of the left’s redefinition efforts. It was important that the word be redefined, because the left believed (and was correct in that belief) that, by applying the word to relationships to which it had not previously been applied, the way we thought about those relationships would change. That’s why achieving the legal status of marriage was inadequate: the word itself, with its rich associations, had to be roped into service as well.
Of the three, the equation of speech and violence is particularly pernicious and destructive. Our greatest right, our most fundamental right, is of conscience — the right to believe what we wish and to hold those beliefs openly. The left’s insistence that speech is violence is an effort to justify restricting our speech, and ultimately to restrict what we can believe and express. One doesn’t have to have read Orwell to see how this works.
Speech is not violence. Speak. Don’t surrender your right to conscience and free expression — even if you believe things that some people don’t like.
Published in Culture
Well said!
Yes, the two biological sexes, male and female, are expressed on a spectrum.
Sticks and Stones
Just break my bones
But NAMES
Can really hurt me!!!!
[Updated for this new era.]
This is why we have freedom of speech – so we don’t resort to violence in settling our differences. However, the left refuses to accept defeat, and resorts either to surreptitous means (via the courts) or outright violence (BLM, antifa) to advance their agenda . . .
These people do not have enough experience with real violence.
That thought has crossed my mind.
When silence is violence, what protection do you have for silent meditation, or being slow to respond, or not talking and taking offense in your sleep?
Their rule is: “Your speech is violence, but our violence is speech.”
Dija see where the Seattle
riotersprotesters are suing the city because they have to buy expensive gear to protect themselves from the police actions? They say that because some can’t afford the protective equipment, their freedom of speech is being abrogated.True – no experience at the receiving end of real violence . . .
Did anyone notice the acceleration on all that you describe above, specifically during the Obama administration? Prior to that, during the Bush years, I don’t recall this intensity of language changes, gender changes, race relationship declines and reverse racism, the levels of depression, mental health issues and suicides among youth being so high, the intense shaming and silencing of free speech, the open abuse, like people in the Trump administration eating in a restaurant and being shouted out, the uptick in occult interest, the increase of intense anger and rage, and on and on and on. I sincerely think evil increased when boundaries, standards and values were diminished – the moral barriers that held some of these things in check.
You are talking about a pillar of civilization – the separate yet complementary distinctions between male and female, and the purpose of marriage to a healthy society. Evil wants to remove this pillar. I was watching a you tube interview about a woman who wrote a book about the intense increase of young girls transitioning to an alternate sex. It is a shame and a sham for “progressives” and feminists to claim to be for women, supporting this gender confusion in youth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtftWcgXjdg
The is Joe Rogan show featuring Abagail Shrier, who wrote a book on this issue happening to young girls. It was featured in a recent The Moynihan Letters (Dr. Moynihan is Editor of Inside the Vatican).
Yes, I noticed a definite redefinition of race relations and racial expectations, fostered essentially by 0bama and his wing-man Holder. 0bama, the first nominally black US president, was also the first president to speak of a set race/police conflict.
He also was one of the lawyers that coerced banks into lending “red-line” loans to poorly qualified applicants, a practice that was directly responsible for the sub-prime melt-down of 2008.
Equating physical violence with being made uncomfortable is a dangerous philosophical linkage. I think it’s further reinforced by the (dubious) concept of reparations for all the “physical violence” absorbed by past minority generations. Basically, they are just descibing the loss of self control (also excused by the left but less convincing to others). And what about the counter stress of not knowing if you can venture into a previously safe part of town – and how that affects everyone, regardless of politics?
Notice that Conservatives aren’t allowed to argue the mirror image back over the divide. My proof: A Facebook insert seen this week that said “Hey Conservatives, maybe if you had dealt with the Nazis better, we would’t have needed a Black Lives Matter.”
A: What Nazis, as in looting and destroying things? Where has this been happening? The left cannot make equivalencies that the argument depends on. Hence: FAIL
What is a Facebook insert?