Tuesday, May 19, 2020

Deconstructing Deconstructionism



Finishing graduate school in 1977, it’s been forty-three years now since I was a full-time college student. School came easily to me, except for math, and I could work a full-time job.which kept me grounded in the real world. Most of my professors were classical liberals as opposed to doctrinaire liberals who became so common in the 1980s and after, and who predominate on today’s campuses. Back then, nobody had ever heard of “trigger warnings” or “safe spaces.”  Contrary ideas were welcomed, not condemned. 


Then along came French philosophers Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida who had outsmarted themselves. Their deconstructionist and relativist ideas strongly flooded campuses across the western world. Objective reality was scorned in favor of perceived reality. The real world was whatever you wanted it to be, they thought. Nothing was real. Everything was socially constructed, they believed. You could have your own reality. There were no absolutes and the dictatorship of relativism ruled.


None of it influenced my formation and for that I’m grateful. Would it have if I’d been born twenty years later? Maybe, but I don’t think so. As an outsider, an anachronism, I could impartially observe creeping nihilist deconstructionism and the resulting erosion of collective sanity in a world that denied objective reality. I remember singing along with the Kinks’ “Lola”: “Boys will be girls and girls will be boys; it’s a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world…” but I never took that seriously. I suspect the Kinks didn’t either.


Today though, the Democrat left is determined to continue pushing the idea that boys really can change into girls, and vice versa, if they simply declare it. Twenty years ago, no one would have predicted this concept would be accepted by any but a wacky few, much less such a large portion of American citizenry. Efforts to criminalize those still daring to publicly voice a contrary opinion continue nationwide. Nonetheless, there’s a chink developing in the Democrat LGBTQIA… armor: women’s sports. They have been infiltrated by men pretending to be women, and real women cannot compete.


Cheryl Radachowsky, mother of a champion high school track star, wrote in a New York Post article last October: “As a parent, it is gut-wrenching to know that no matter how hard my daughter works to achieve her goals, she will lose athletic opportunities to a pernicious gender ideology. Left unchecked, this ideology will in the long run eliminate fair play for all biological females in all sports.”


Radachowsky pointed out that men are stronger and faster than women “Even when the men’s testosterone levels matched that of ­biological women [according to a recent Swedish study], the men’s competitive advantages remained almost fully intact, with muscle size and bone density remaining virtually unchanged in some and decreasing only 5 percent in others.” Men are setting records in women’s sports. They’re taking championships and scholarships away from real women like Radachowsky’s daughter, Alanna Smith.


As a sophomore, Ms. Smith set two new records at a recent New England championship meet held in Maine and is a complainant in an ongoing Title IX investigation with the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. She and about 30,000 others would like to prevent males from competing against females. The reader may notice that I’m not calling them “trans-females” because I don’t accept that there’s any such thing.


If the so-called Equality Act passes Congress and is signed by a Democrat president, I would be subject to lawsuits by LGBTQIA… litigants for writing such things. President Trump won’t sign it, but a President Biden would. Should it ever become law, Alanna Smith and other real females athletes would have to permanently give up their dreams of an athletic scholarship. Doctors and nurses who refuse to cut off healthy breasts, penises, and testicles would be fired. The 15% of our hospitals that are Catholic and would be sued for sticking to their beliefs.


As the Heritage Foundation puts it: “[The Equality Act] would empower the government to interfere in how regular Americans think, speak, and act at home, at school, at work and at play. Any bill promoting such authoritarianism is a danger to our freedoms.” The feminist movement is divided on the Equality Act and some radical feminists have joined conservatives in opposition. Has the LGBTQIA… “community” finally pushed the envelope too far? Could be, but then who ever thought it would get half as far as it has?

22 comments:

Brian said...

I agree that women's sports leagues should be allowed to only permit people who were born physically female.

I don't think a doctor could ever be successfully sued for not performing a sex change operation as it would most certainly be out of their "scope of practice". They are not trained nor do they have experience to do so. Unless they want to, and then get trained.

I do think that doctors could be sued for discriminating against trans patients by denying them treatment for procedures they do on straight patients.

And Tom, overplaying the "woe-is-me, I'm a victim of those awful minorities" card is not a good look. Weak.

Also, trying to pin the "I'll shame you if I disagree with you" thing just on progressives is obviously ridiculous. There is no bigger example of this than Trump. If he disagrees with you it will result in a tantrum of a twitter storm of insults and shaming. This is where conservatives take their cue.

Kafir said...

We can all thank Justice Hugo Black who in the 1947 case of Everson v. Board of Education announced the new legal principle: “The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state.” This effectively lead to removing all Christian language, imagery or symbolism from public property. Later, decisions to outlaw school prayer or eliminate “under God” in the pledge of allegiance were by-products of that decision.

Leftists, atheists, secular progressives and so on dismiss our traditional Judeo-Christian values, but look what has happened to our country because of it.

Brian said...

Well kafir, I guess you are smarter than Thomas Jefferson when it comes to creating the rules of a country.

Besides, whatever is going wrong in our country has way more to do with the rich and powerful elite having the notion that they can get way with anything, and do whatever they want, right or wrong, because they can (from grabbing a woman by the pu$$y to polluting and damaging our health for profit) than it does with children saying "under god" - which they still do in almost every school, by the way.

Kafir said...

Oh, those dastardly rich and powerful elites.....again.

I guess you missed the sexual misconduct accusation about Sleepy Joe, the hair sniffer. I don’t approve of the conduct of either person. However, the difference was that Trump was a private citizen and Biden was a Senator. And, of course, while all women should be believed in the Kavanaugh case, the hypocrites supporting Biden ignore his behavior.

Have you forgotten that I don’t care what you think?

Steve said...

Actually the difference is Trump admitted, even bragged about committing sexual assault. Biden has not, that I know of.

Brian said...

Another difference is that Trump has over 25 sexual assault claims against him while Biden has one. The bragging from Trump was just grotesque. The exact behavior that elites like him feel they can and should get away with.

Greg Vander Veer said...

Tom McLaughlin is at again with his desperate columns attacking and insulting the LGBTQ community and anyone with an open heart and mind. It isn't really worth refuting anything he said because it is all his typical hateful drivel written in pretentious manner to make ignorance sound intelligent. The one thing I can't begin to understand is why Tom, a man of seemingly many interests with a nice family and a big piece of land in Maine, is so obsessed with gay people. Get over it Tom. Your latest outrage about broken dreams of athletes or whatever nonsense it is you are rambling on about this week is just more of the same old same old. I think you might have writers block! Why in the world are you writing about "cutting off penises"? Perhaps you should go for a long walk in your woods and take solace in the fact that their isn't a single LGBTQ person chasing you and trying to ruin your precious way of life.

Kafir said...

Brian, Brian, Brian. Do I have to correct your lack of historical knowledge once again? Jefferson borrowed the metaphor of “The Garden and the Wilderness” (the church was the garden to be protected from the wilderness of the government) from Roger Williams. He never coined the phrase “separation of church and state”.

Chief Justice Rehnquist said, “the wall of separation” is bad history and worse law. It has made a a positive chaos out of court rulings.”

I didn’t respond to your drivel earlier because I’ve been following the Flynn case which I hope (but won’t hold my breath) will blow the lid off Manchurian candidate’s and the Hildabeast’s facades once and for all.

Brian said...

Kafir, Kafir, Kafir, Kafir, Kafir. Do you have to continually make a fool of yourself? Who cares who "coined" a phrase? The fact remains that Jefferson was a staunch believer in the separation of church and state. Are you really disputing this? Is your knowledge of US history really that bad?

I'll stick with my belief that Thomas Jefferson had better ideas about nation building than you and Rehnquist.

The only thing the Flynn case is revealing is the incredible swampiness of the corrupt Trump administration.

Kafir said...

Will soon see. We’ll also see in November who prevails, Trump or Sleepy Joe...if he makes it that far.

Kafir said...

Brian, if you can read rather than blockage, may I suggest:
https://www.heritage.org/political-process/report/the-mythical-wall-separation-how-misused-metaphor-changed-church-state-law

Kafir said...

The word is bloviate, not blockage. Damn, iPad!

Brian said...

In Jefferson's own writing:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

Looking forward to November. I wonder if Crooked Morbidly Obese Trump will make it that far.

Kafir said...

OK, Nancy, or should I say Nancy Boy?

Brian said...

Should you say "Nancy"? No, you should say "Thomas". As in Jefferson, the Founding Father whose words refute yours.

And as for the morbidly obese president, blame Trump or the medical report that classifies him so.

Kafir said...

The gaff machine is at it again with, “African Americans who vote for Trump ain’t black”. Identity politics at its best. Good luck in November. 🤡

Brian said...

Yes, it looks like the king of identity politics, Trump, has some competition with this. I think Biden will be alright with his 81% to 3% lead with African Americans. No luck will be needed in November.

Kafir said...

Biden sure looked good yesterday at a cemetery in DE, don’t you think?

Btw, last night I had dinner IN a restaurant in Fort Lauderdale. Today, I went to the gym and for a swim in the Atlantic Ocean. 1.8 million people in Broward County compared to the whole state of Maine with 1.3 million. Why would I want to come back to a state run by the Gestapo?

I can tell you one thing, when I do get home, I won’t quarantining myself for 14 days.


Brian said...

I honestly don't understand the question about Biden at the cemetery. Knowing kafir it must be somehow meant as a sort of sarcastic mocking, but for the life of me I can't figure out its secret dig. What I did like is watching Trump struggle to stand up straight at Arlington! Maybe he was tired from his golf? Bone spurs acting up?

Oh, and Maine doesn't want you either. Why would they? Why don't you do us all a favor and quarantine yourself forever in a closet in Florida.

Kafir said...

I just might. I’ll see how I feel after playing golf today. Actually, Maine is my home and none of you cucks are going to keep me from coming back....even Comrade Mills.

Brian said...

Do you have the cajones to try and rationalize the Toddler Prince criticizing Obama for golfing while doing so way more often himself? Hypocrites, Trump and his supporters alike.

Brian said...

Pathetically predictable that the Toddler Prince, aware of how likely it is that he gets trounced in the election, is trying to pretend that if he loses it will be because of election fraud and not because he is the sorriest excuse for a president in history. He did the same thing in 2016. How is Twitter "stifling free speech" by saying - hey, check out the facts on this? Twitter is not stopping his free speech, they are just saying to verify what he spews. It is Trump trying to stifle the free speech of Twitter by saying they can't speak out on this.