‘Rachel’ Mackinnon is a cyclist smashing speed records and winning golds across the track, which may sound at first glance sound like Lance, as in Armstrong epic, circa mid-nineties, before his drug scandal surfaced (about which I have my own reserve, with a suspicion that they were, and are, all doing some sort of ‘drug’).
But ‘Rachel’ don’t need no stinkin’ drugs, since Rachel – whose original, and, real, name, insofar as reality applies to this situation, does not appear on her Wikipedia page – is actually a man, pretending – excuse me, transitioning – to be a woman, with male musculature, endurance, size, power, testosterone. Her photo, which one can see on her page, tells a thousand words.
Yet dare one stand up this emperor with the XY genotype – something from which one cannot transition – and her manly phenotype? We’re all scared into believing – or at least, saying we believe – the tripe that ‘gender’ is ‘fluid’. Meanwhile, back in reality, the only thing fluid is our own conviction in the truth.
The sound of MacKinnon’s size eleven boot clicking into his bicycle toe-holds is the distant sound of the beginning of the end of we quaintly may recall as ‘women’s’ sports’. For of course the inverse would not hold: A woman ‘transitioning’ to becoming a man (which is more rare than vice versa) may compete all she wants with boys, and she will invariably lose.
What is far more tragic is the ‘gender-transitioning’ of a seven-year old boy, a process his pediatrician (!) mother fully supports and encourages, and who has gone to court against the boy’s father who wants to stop this unfolding tragedy of his boy becoming a ‘girl’. Oh, and they conceived said child by IVF, which already speaks volumes.
The jury recently decided unanimously – yes, you read that right, not one vote against – in the mother’s favour, against the father and, of course, the boy’s best interests. How does a seven year old know much of anything, and resist the ideological promptings of his own mother? It seems the whole process began when said Mum saw her boy preferring a girl’s toy at a store.
Where does one begin, when such madness has descended upon a land? But begin we must, for the darkness and falsity must be fought with the light of goodness and truth.
Yet, on that note, the CBC’s Carol Off wants to forbid any and all debate, discussion and disagreement on this issue, making any questioning of MacKinnon’s decision, and anyone like him, verboten. Ms. Off recently grilled a certain Vickery Bowles, Toronto’s top librarian, about the library’s decision to host Meaghan Murphy, who questions transgenderism on her own feminist principles. In this battle of two ideologies, transgenderism, at least in our current milieu, wins (one wonders what will happen when they go up against the immovable wall of radical Islam).
Ms. Bowles held her ground and defended her decision on the principles of free speech, and the fact that Ms. Murphy has not been charged with a criminal offense. Oh, well. I wish she had grilled Ms. Off back on what the radio host considers ‘gender’ to be, and if we can even use the terms ‘man’ and ‘woman’ anymore. Comradesse Carol claimed that any doubt on gender fluidity was harmful and hurtful to such a fragile minority group. Even the craven mayor of Toronto, whom Ms. Off claims ‘believes in free speech’ has asked that this event not be held- which means he doesn’t believe in free speech. Even though I don’t agree fully with her argument, ‘tis heartening to hear Vickery Bowles hold her ground. You may read the whole sorry transcript here.
I’m not sure what they’re all worked up about. MacKinnon, for one, looks like he would do a decent job defending himself, at least physically. But no one, as far as I know, intends any harm to him or anyone like him. Yet, even mentally disagreeing with them, even in one’s private thoughts, will soon be enough to land you in the judicial kangaroo purgatory of the Human Rights Court.
MacKinnon is in one sense free in our current dystopia to do what he wants with his own body, even if I would argue that our medical system should not be cooperative in any chemical or surgical mutilation, especially at public expense.
What we should, indeed must, resist is any attempt to force me and others to bend to their own bending of truth. Or, as per above, foisting it upon children.
The problem here is metaphysical: What makes a man, a man, and a woman, a woman? The Church teaches that this is decided by God, manifested in our conception as XX or XY zygotes, and develops from there in all the potentialities of our life. Our sex – which they now call ‘gender’ – is not something we choose, and may modify at will, but is a gift given to us.
The modern world no longer believes in a body-soul composite, but rather as a body and soul separate (a ‘woman trapped in a man’s body’). Or, perhaps more commonly, even if implicit, as just material bodies, who have by Darwinian evolutionary forces morphed into ‘male’ and ‘female’, but those same forces, including our technology, may permit further evolution, into who knows how many genders…
Saint Thomas defines truth as an adequatio rei et intellectus, a conformity between the mind and reality. Once that link is broken, some degree of insanity inevitably ensues. As Chesterton quipped, the madman has not lost his reason; he’s lost everything except his reason, now ree-floating in the realms of his own fantasy.
Which is just about where Ms. Off, Mz./Mr. MacKinnon and so much of the rest of Canada and the world live. Hence, the re-election of someone like Justin Trudeau.
A final thought: I suppose we could avoid the pronoun wars in this case, since ‘Rachel’ is apparently a Ph.D., hence earning the appellation ‘Dr.’, touted as an associate professor of philosophy at the College of Charleston in South Carolina, which says more about their philosophy program, and graduate school in general, than it does about the cycling philosopher.
The truth always wins out in the end, when MacKinnon is revealed as the man he is, or is not.