When explaining to students how Abraham Lincoln contested Stephen Douglas and others who defended slavery by denying the essential human nature (and therefore equality) of blacks, I like to review one of Lincoln’s logical questions: “If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have? The answer is four: calling a tail a leg does not make it so.” The point is: nature is real, and calling something by an unnatural name doesn’t change that essential fact.
With that in mind, take in this headline and news summary from the usually sensible Daily Mail:
You don’t even need to read more to spot the looniness of calling a woman a “man,” except apparently today calling a man a “woman” is thought to be perfectly sensible, even if said “man” keeps his her “original parts.” Look, as I’ve written elsewhere, if you want to “switch teams” and go through complete gender reassignment surgery, more power to you. I like to compare such people to the pig in the bacon and eggs breakfast joke: the chicken is involved, but the pig is committed.
Naturally if you persist in pointing out the obvious—that a person with “original [female] equipment” is a woman—you’re a bigot. I wonder, especially in this age of animal rights, how long it will be before quoting Lincoln on the number of legs a dog has will be forbidden as hate speech. There are five legs, you will be compelled to say (if you know the reference).
Also: Portland. Of course.
P.S. Iowahawk sensibly asks: Just how is it we know that the baby is a boy?
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