Progressive Illogic

Items in the news recently accentuate the lack of logic that’s typical of progressive “thought.” For example, progressives deny the scientific, biological reality of two human sexes, male and female, as determined unequivocally by DNA.

Denying reality, progressives prefer to reify imaginary “genders” which, at last count, were up to as many as 63.

The reality is two sexes: male and female. If you have a Y chromosome, you’re male, which rule neatly classifies the tiny number of individuals born with a condition that some call “intersex,” meaning something went haywire during embryonic development and phenotype at birth may or may  not obviously match genotype.

Being “intersex”  is not a normal state. It’s an aberration. An abnormality. It does not constitute a third sex any more than those born with Down Syndrome or dwarfism constitute other subspecies of human beings.

Nevertheless, progressives prefer to imagine that a person should be allowed to declare himself or herself to be of another sex (or “gender”) and the rest of us must accept that delusion as reality. So in the progressive universe, people are allowed to self-identify their sex.

One would think that logic dictates that if a person is allowed to “change” one immutable characteristic, then a person should be allowed to change any other immutable characteristic. How about age?

A man in the Netherlands has thought of it and is taking his quest to “change” his age to court:

Emile Ratelband, a 69-year-old motivational speaker in the Netherlands, has petitioned a Dutch court for permission to change his legal age by altering his birth certificate to show he was born 20 years later than he really was — to legally make him 49 rather 69 years old.

Ratelband told the Washington Post: “We can make our own decisions if we want to change our name, or if we want to change our gender. So I want to change my age. My feeling about my body and about my mind is that I’m about 40 or 45.”

Dennis Prager writes:

Now, what exactly is wrong with Ratelband’s argument? If sex doesn’t objectively exist, why does age? If feelings determine sex, why don’t feelings determine age? If we are to regard sex as “assigned” at birth, why don’t we regard age as “assigned” at birth?

One would think that progressives would agree with Ratelband’s quest. Au contraire!

The very progressive editorial board of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch recently published a “short take” on the Dutch man’s self-identification. They also threw in some equally illogical shade on a white woman’s self-identification as a black woman: [emphasis added to quotes]

Social construct meaning a familial or cultural grouping. That article was published in the notoriously progressive New York Times. The experts have spoken!

Nevertheless, the editors of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch dismiss the very idea that Rachel Dolezal can have a “choice” concerning with which social construct, which social grouping, which racial identity, which racial culture she most identifies. These editors imply that race is not a choice, against all scientific evidence. Again, we’ve been told by progressives and scientists that race is not “real”.

If race is not “real” because it’s not biologically determined, then sex must be “real” because it is biologically determined. Similarly, age is “real” because it also is biologically determined.

Is it, therefore, logical (and not hypocritical) for progressives to

• allow self-identification of sex against biological reality, while at the same time
• disallowing self-identification of age against biological reality, but also
• disallowing self-identification of race (or racial identity) even though (progressives insist that) race and racial identify are not “real” in the sense that age and sex are “real,” as in immutable facts of nature?

Like race, “gender” (in the sense of 63 and counting expressions of sexual orientation) is fluid. That makes it not “real”, as opposed to the fact that age and sex are “real” because they’re biologically determined and immutable.

Remember that Dolezal, according to progressives, is not allowed to self-identify her race. However, as we have seen, anyone is allowed by progressives to self-identify his or her gender, even though both racial identity and gender identity are fluid.

Is that logical? Is that consistent?

How do progressives manage to keep their heads from exploding from all the cognitive dissonance?

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