Some questions spurred by recent cultural events:
1. Setting aside the criteria of commitment to the Constitution, competence, and wisdom, Joe Biden said he would only nominate a black woman for the Supreme Court vacancy. This is identity politics to the extreme. But now the identity of Biden’s pick is in doubt. That nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson, has just admitted in her Congressional hearing that she does not know what a woman is. Therefore, how can she know she is a woman? How do we know she fits Biden’s criteria that the justice pick must be a woman? And if a woman is an undefinable thing, why do we need one on the Supreme Court anyway?
After hearing the mantra “follow the science” constantly for the last couple years, we now have a Supreme Court justice nominee who is pretending the most basic, obvious facts of human biology are not real. If ever there were proof that we live in total idiocracy, Biden and Jackson are it. Every nation has its share of idiots; the problem with America is that we have chosen our idiots to be our rulers.
Sidenote: Obviously, Jackson knows what a woman is even though she is not a biologist. Obviously, Jackson will uphold Title IX, she will treat sex as a protected class under civil rights law, she will "believe all women" in cases of rape accusation, etc. Obviously, she celebrates historic "firsts" for biological women. So what gives? Why did she refuse to answer the "What is a woman?" question? It seems that progressives are schizophrenic. They can acknowledge women on International Woman's Day, and then deny that women exist when confronted about transgenderism. But this shifting, this fluidity, is the very essence of progressivism. For progressives, gender must be fluid because gender is a social construct. Indeed, for progressives, everything is a social construct so everything is fluid. There are no created natures, no creational "givens." According to progressivism, each person is her/her/its creator. This is why the only "progress" progressives can make is following the downward spiral the Apostle Paul described in Romans 1:18-32. The entire progressive project is idolatrous. It is also Orwellian: their goal is to use their power to get you to live by lies, to confess to something that you know is not true. This is why we must resist.
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2. Liam Thomas (yes, Liam) was a mediocre swimmer when competing against other men. Now that he is a biological male competing against females, he is winning NCAA championships. News flash: Men are bigger, stronger, and faster than women. Christians and conservatives rightly lament that transgenderism threatens to ruin women’s sports. But it is important to understand that the crisis we face is much bigger than transgenderism and it cannot be solved by focusing narrowly on the transgender issue.
The LGBTQ+ revolution is an offshoot of the sexual revolution, going back to at least the 1960s, which was an offshoot of the feminist movement, which has its roots even deeper in American history. I appreciate that some feminists oppose transgenderism in the name of protecting women, but those feminists need to understand that there is a definite link between where feminists in America began generations ago and where we have ended up, with Liam Thomas taking medals and trophies that should have gone to women. Transgenderism is the next logical step in our culture’s rejection of God’s sexual design. And I really do think there is a kind of perverse logic at work. Feminism led women to invade male spaces. Women pushed themselves into roles that had traditionally been reserved to men. This was not necessarily bad in every single case; there are certainly cultural spaces in the modern world in which men and women can work side by side. But the overall effect has been to negate the differences between men and women. And if there are no differences, why shouldn't men and women compete against each other in the swimming pool? If women can invade men's spaces, why can't men invade women's spaces?
Feminism will ultimately always tend towards androgyny. Feminism may be considered the original “transgender” movement in that it encouraged women to pattern their lives and choices after men. In essence, feminists encouraged women to pretend they were men the same way Liam Thomas is pretending to be a woman. Feminists might still wear makeup and might not do hormone therapy or get expensive surgery, but it’s the same gender-bending we see going on with Liam Thomas. Feminism pushed women into male spaces where women did not belong — such as female journalists in male locker rooms, “pastorettes” in church pulpits, and female soldiers in combat roles in the military. Liam Thomas can be understood as a kind of perverse revenge against these feminist encroachments into male spaces. If boys cannot have the Boy Scouts, why should women expect to have their own sporting leagues? Liam Thomas is a weird case of "the patriarchy strikes back."
I do not believe we can recover women’s sports as an exclusively female space until and unless we also recover exclusive male spaces; the two will stand or fall together. And this means unwinding the sexual revolution in a major way. It means recovering and rejoicing in the fundamental differences between men and women — because we really are different in deep and fundamental ways, in our natures and in the roles we are best suited to play. While there is certainly plenty of space men and women can share, it is actually natural and healthy for men and women to have some spaces that are only for those of the same sex. These spaces give older men a chance to mentor younger men in masculinity, and older women a chance to mentor younger women in femininity. These spaces give an opportunity for same sex friendships to form and flourish. Men and women have their own God-assigned domains. Recognizing these domains is crucial to a healthy civilization. But we will only get there if we acknowledge that God’s design and calling for men is distinct from his design and calling for women. So long as we have women in pulpits and tanks, expect men to take over more and more of women’s sports.
Sidenote: Part of recognizing all of this is the reality that sports play a different role for men than they do for women. And some sports men play should be off limits to women altogether because it is impossible for them to be compatible with femininity. Most every major sport or game was invented and developed by men -- football, baseball, basketball, soccer, boxing, wrestling, chess, checkers, etc. Men have traditionally used sports and competitions to test and develop masculinity. Sports are "war by other means" and serve a crucial function in developing boys into men. Sports will never -- or should never -- play an analogous role in the lives of girls and women, since they should be seeking to develop femininity, not masculinity.
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3. Why does our culture today celebrate and encourage masculine qualities in women but call them "toxic" in men? If masculinity is toxic, why are we encouraging women to become more masculine? And how exactly is society served by producing masculinized women and feminized men — especially since men are not really attracted to masculinized women, and women are disgusted by feminized men? Who benefits from a society full of aggressive, assertive women and passive, effeminate men?
We have turned God’s creational design upside down. The male/female polarity that God designed is glorious but we are losing it. God made men and women to complement one another. A few generations ago, husbands and wives knew the dance steps of marriage, so they could “dance" together happily for 50 years, til death did them part. Today, the marriage rate is lower than ever. The birth rate is lower than ever. Divorce and miserable, sexless marriages are all too common. Young men complain there are no good women to marry and young women wonder where all the good men have gone. These trends are signs of a sick, dying, hopeless civilization. We have turned “equality” into “sameness” and “interchageability.” But this kind of androgynous equality destroys the male/female bond as God designed it to function. This kind of equality kills romance. This kind of equality is making our society miserable. Husbands and wives no longer know their dance steps so they are constantly stepping on one another’s toes. The only way to create mutuality between the sexes is to appreciate our sexual differences. Androgyny, by contrast, produces strife, competition, alienation, and Girardian rivalry.
There is no way to pull out of our tailspin without recovering marriage and family life as the cornerstone of civilization. But we can only recover marriage if we encourage men to be masculine and women to be feminine, and to fulfill the sex-specific callings God has given to us. My opinion: the greatest threat to our civilization comes not from Russia or China, but from within, from ideologies and fads that destroy masculinity in men and femininity in women. If/when American falls, it will be because our families fell first.