Fact, Etiquette, and a Twitter Spat

A Republican politician recently got in trouble with Twitter for tweeting that Rachel Levine who was given a four star admiral’s rank (not in the navy but in a civilian health care bureau) was not the first female to hold that rank as had been claimed, since Levine is a man.  One politician more or less on that silly platform does not matter much, but it is worthwhile to consider some issues involved in  the dust up.

The first step should be to look at the facts. With the  exception of rare abnormal cases, every human being has either two X chromosomes, making her female, or one X and one Y, making him male.  That genetic determination of sex is as definitive and unchangeable as the genetic determination that a person is a homo sapiens and not a horse or a bird. That is simple biological science. A cross dressing, surgically altered man who takes female hormones and wishes to be seen as a woman is not a woman. He is a cross dressing, surgically altered man who takes female hormones and wishes to be seen as a woman. The genes cannot be changed.

Then one can move on to questions of manners and etiquette. In America anyone can pretend to be, convince himself he is, or represent himself as anything he wants. It’s a free country, and if someone wants to say he is  Jesus, Mohammed, the lost heir to the Russian throne, the inventor of a perpetual motion machine, or a person of the opposite sex, he has the right to do so.  But he has no right to demand that others believe him or to have them punished for their disbelief.

However there is often no good reason to go up to a person and tell him that no, he didn’t really build a perpetual motion machine. Polite, self confident people will generally find it more appropriate to leave another’s delusions to him and avoid rudeness or unnecessary disputes.  One may be quite sure that a man cannot become a woman and still be civil to those who claim they have done it. Most of us know and like people who believe outrageous stuff of one sort or another.

What the Republican said was true. Saying it would have been rude and unnecessary in normal times. In present conditions, it is justified not because of anything about Levine but as a well deserved  put down of the Dems’ fatuous bragging about delivering some sort of  first for women with this. Twitter should have left the guy alone.

Feminism and Multculturalism

 “One can be  a feminist, or one can be a multiculturalist, but on cannot be both.”

-attributed in various forms to various people

 

The recent disaster in Afghanistan might have gotten people thinking about validity of the above quote. It is not literally true. People can and do hold all sorts of contradictory notions simultaneously. What is actually meant is that one cannot consistently be both a feminist and a multiculturalist, and that is true. The term “feminist” is used in a number of ways including simply denoting any woman who votes with the Democrats.  However the relevant meaning in this  context is a person who believes that each woman has an unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and should have the same legal rights and political authority as men. “Multiculturalist” also is used in various ways, even sometimes meaning only a preson favoring the uncontroversial idea that people should learn the characteristics of different cultures and appreciate the accomplishments of people in them. However the relevant meaning is one who rejects the notion of universally valid principles and norms and believes that people’s actions and ideas should be judged and considered only in terms of their culture’s accepted practices and beliefs, with one culture’s notions of what is right or morally desirable  no more valid than another’s. 

 A consistent feminist would say that the treatment women will be getting and the conditions they will be facing in Afghanistan under the Taliban are wrong, while a conistent multiculturalist would say that they are manifestations of traditional Islamic culture in that country and that condemnation of the Taliban for them is wrong (and probably racist to boot, these days). I and I think most libertarians and liberals and a good many conservatives side with the feminists. A person in Afghanistan or North Korea or China has the same rights as one in Zurich or Kansas City, and seriously violating them is a crime wherever it happens and whoever does it. I think many or most leftists agree with the multiculturalists. They have an incentive. Doing so provides an easy way to avoid criticizing the savagery  of communist states past and present (and some non-communist savages who hate America as much as they do) while being outraged and every real or imagined fault of the United States past or present

William Frawley Saves Christmas?

There is a delightful scene in the 1947 Christmas movie Miracle on 34th Street where the judge in the case to commit Kris to a mental institution for believing he is Santa Claus is considering how to rule on the question of whether Santa Claus exists.  The judge at first assumes he will have to agree  with the district attorney that he does not.  Then a political boss played by William Frawley  explains things to him.  “All right, you go back and tell them that the New York State Supreme Court rules there's no Santa Claus. It's all over the papers. The kids read it and they don't hang up their stockings. Now what happens to all the toys that are supposed to be in those stockings? Nobody buys them. The toy manufacturers are going to like that; so they have to lay off a lot of their employees, union employees. Now you got the CIO and the AF of L against ya and they're going to adore ya for it and they're going to say it with votes. Oh, and the department stores are going to love ya too and the Christmas card makers and the candy companies. Ho ho, Henry, you're going to be an awful popular fella. And what about the Salvation Army? Why, they got a Santy Claus on every corner, and they're taking a fortune. But you go ahead Henry, you do it your way. You go on back in there and tell them that you rule there is no Santy Claus. Go on. But if you do, remember this: you can count on getting just two votes, your own and that district attorney's out there.”   The judge prudently changes his mind and ducks the question.

Over the weekend Anthony Fauci clearly and explicitly announced on TV that people might or might not be able to spend Christmas with their families and friends this year, and it was just too early to tell.  Then on Monday he declared  that of course people can enjoy a normal Christmas with their families and denied ever meaning anything else. One can  wonder if some modern day William Frawley from the Democrat party gave him the same sort of advice the judge got in the movie. It is surely amusing to think one did. Whatever one thinks of Fauci’s performance on other things in his dealing with the epidemic, his arrogance, shiftiness, and utter failure on the marketing and public relations side are obvious