Becalmed on the Ship of Fools

 

A sign of how delusional—and immoral—our current society has become: going out for a social evening can feel like walking on eggshells. Just like life in a dysfunctional family, in a dysfunctional society there are many truths you cannot say, and many untruths you are compelled to say. Or else all hell breaks loose.

At a poetry reading Sunday last, for example, we had to begin with a “land acknowledgement,” saying we were grateful to be allowed to exist on the traditional land of three or more indigenous tribes. This is nonsense: the fact that three or more tribes always need to be named illustrates the fact that none had secure possession, and therefore none owned the property. Leaving aside that any residual hypothetical claims to sovereignty were formally renounced centuries ago, in return for compensation. These “land acknowledgements” violate the fundamental principle of human equality: the land was made by God for all. Nobody has a greater claim to it only due to ancestry. Immigrants are not third-class citizens.

Then one poet came up to the stage with a transgender flag hanging out of her pocket, and pointed out that today was International Day of Transgender Visibility. We all had to politely applaud like seals. And then the host came up and apologized for not mention this at the beginning of proceedings. We all had to acknowledge that people can be transgender, and they are oppressed if they are, and this girl was a boy.

But in reality, only words have genders. People have sex, and one’s sex is a physical fact, coded in every cell. Webster’s Dictionary, 1913: “Gender is a grammatical distinction and applies to words only. Sex is natural distinction and applies to living objects.” Human Gender is a nonsense concept. It began as “gender roles,” a feminist claim that one’s behaviour need not be conditioned by one’s sex. That claim itself was demonstrably false; men can’t have babies. But now the horse is out of the barn, has contracted mad cow disease, and is cannibalizing feminism itself.

Then, in conversation, a new friend reveals that both her children have ADHD. But she loves them despite their disability. 

Poor kids. ADD is just having a strong and lively imagination, now stigmatized as a disease. One might as well stigmatize high intelligence as morbid. That’s pretty much what we’re doing. Dangerous, no doubt: being smart and not doing what you’re told needs to be stomped on early, else who knows what these kids might say as they get older? Perhaps that the emperor has no clothes. Yet again, I have to bite my tongue, and leave those poor kids to their Ritalin-addled fate.

Such is life in 21st century Canada. A big reason why I feel compelled to keep this blog: my little sane space.