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Checking Boxes: Transgender Chic
Chuck Colson (archive)

April 1, 2004

Members of the next incoming freshman class at Brown University
will enjoy a new option when it comes to on-campus housing: what the
school calls a "gender-neutral option." Students selecting
that option will live in a dorm with "lockable bathrooms for use by
one person."

While we all like our privacy, just what kind of student requires
these special accommodations? The answer: The newest fashionable
minority on colleges campuses, "transgender students."

Fifty years ago, George Jorgensen stunned the world when he checked
into a Copenhagen hospital and left as Christine Jorgensen after the
world's first sex-change surgery.

Until recently, claims that someone was "a man trapped in a
woman's body," or vice versa, were regarded with skepticism. The
reason is clear: Many of the people making these claims suffer from
some kind of mental illness, and what they really need is treatment,
not radical surgery. Even more importantly, there was a well-founded
reluctance to believe that nature had somehow made a "mistake."

Now, as events at Brown demonstrate, we don't hesitate to think
that nature might have made a mistake. In fact, we deny that nature
has anything to do with a person's sex. That's because of the
influence that feminism and "queer theory," as it is called, have on
college campuses.

For both of these philosophies, the idea that there is such a thing
as fixed human nature, or one biologically determined, especially
with regard to sexuality, is the enemy. If we are, as the Scriptures
say, created male and female, then this limits our personal
autonomy— which is, after all, the summum bonum of modern American
life.

And so postmodern academics replaced the word sex with gender, a
word historically associated with classification and description.
This enabled feminists to claim that the qualities normally
associated with the sexes were socially constructed, that is,
imposed from without as opposed to being inherent. "Queer
theorists" depict human sexuality as a continuum as opposed to
being "either/or." So a man, biologically, can choose to be
feminine, and vice versa—just another life choice.

While these ideas didn't hold much sway among ordinary Americans,
they've become articles of faith on college campuses and among
elites. They've been added to another staple of postmodern
thought, identity politics, which views membership in a particular
group as the basis for all action. The result is separate dorms
for "transgender students"—that is, men who choose to be
feminine and women who choose to be masculine.

If this sounds absurd to you, you're not alone. Phillip Johnson
tells a story in his great book The Right Questions about a fellow
faculty member at Berkeley who taught his students the postmodern
line. Then his son began crossdressing, and dad, despite his
proclamations, was embarrassed to introduce him at a dinner party.
All the young man was doing, of course, was following his
father's
teaching.

Even postmodern academics can be awakened when they see where their
worldview leads. On some level they still understand that
transgender, as it is called, is not only a violation of the moral
order, but also a violation of the biological order. It takes a lot
more to overcome "male and female He created them" than
checking a box on a college housing form.
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For further reading and information:

Fred A. Bernstein, " On Campus, Rethinking Biology 101 ," New
York Times, 7 March 2004 . (Archived article; costs $2.95 to
retrieve.)

Lotem Almog, " ResCouncil passes co-ed housing resolution ,"
Brown Daily Herald, 21 February 2003 .

Jim Brown, " Another First for American Education:
`Gender-Blind' Dorms ," Catholic Exchange, 16 June 2003 .

Donald P. Myers, " A Changed Man ," Newsday (biographical
article about George Jorgensen).

BreakPoint Commentary No. 040209, " Gender Blender: Adolescent
Girls and `Heteroflexibility' ."

BreakPoint Commentary No. 030808, " Questionable Purposes: The
Harvey Milk School ."

BreakPoint Commentary No. 010516, " Prom King Thinks He's a
She ."
(Archived commentary; free registration required.)

BreakPoint Commentary No. 961016, " Blurred Biology: How Many
Sexes
Are There? " (Archived commentary; free registration required.)

Phillip E. Johnson, The Right Questions: Truth, Meaning, and Public
Debate (InterVarsity, 2002).

John Colapinto, As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised As a Girl
(HarperCollins, 2000).

Mike S. Adams, " A queer theory of free speech ,"
Townhall.com, 15
January 2004.


Chuck Colson is founder and chairman of BreakPoint Online, a
Townhall.com member group.

©2004 BreakPoint Online