A World Turned Upside Down

Not too long ago, a friend lent me Carol Tuttle's book It's Just My Nature! and told me that it had made a world of difference in her relationships with other people, especially in her business.  I read it through quickly enough-- I don't know if you are familiar with Tuttle's work at all-- but she believes that everybody has a personality (or a nature) that falls into one of four categories.  She gives you some descriptions of personality traits that go with each nature, and then leaves you to decide yourself which category you fit in.  There is no quiz that pigeonholes you.  In a way that's good because you can rely on your own gut feelings about it.  On the other hand, if you're like me, you end up with two categories that possibly work and you just can't decide which one is your "primary" type.  To a certain degree, my inability to place myself in a category decreased my interest in her theory.  But I was struck by the descriptions she gives of Type 4, one of the two labels that fit me.  Type 4's are the judges, the rocks, the people who are slow to change their opinions.  They have their worldview, and they are very stable.  Over the years (and especially lately) I've had it beat into my head that so much of this kind of personality is bad.  "Judge Not, Lest Ye Be Judged!"  from the religious arena and "Tolerance! Coexistence! Acceptance!" from the secular side.

But quite frankly, I'm the kind of person who DOES judge.

What made Tuttle's description of the Type 4's-- the judges, if you will-- resonate with me is that she explains that people like me are necessary.  Our views of discernment are important!  The example she gave was of Simon Cowell when he was an American Idol judge.  He could be harsh.  He could be unforgiving.  But in the end, if you wanted to know if you were really good, it was Simon's opinion that mattered.

I don't believe in being harshly critical or censuring of people, especially to their faces.  I also believe kindness and forbearance are truly important attributes to possess.  HOWEVER.  I do believe there is such a thing as right and wrong.  Truth and falsehood.  Better and worse.  Effective and unsuccessful.  Judgement is deciding which behavior, values, institutions, etc. fall into which category.

Truth is important to me.  I don't think that as a mortal with limited abilities I can discover all truth.  But the things I see that are true I stick to, and I do judge based on that.

This brings me to some of the latest craziness.  It's not new, but it's gotten unprecedented coverage lately because of Bruce Jenner and some other prominent people.  There is a whole swath of our culture claiming that we can change our actual genetic nature just because of our feelings.  That if a man "feels" or "knows" he is a woman, regardless of his biology, he is a woman and should be treated as such.  This is giving the judge side of my personality a headache.

This is ludicrous.  I'm going to say it straight out and never mind political correctness.  (Truth doesn't care about "feelings.")  Except for a teensy-tiny number of people with a very rare condition, everyone on this earth was born genetically either a MALE or a FEMALE.  This is dictated by your chromosomes.  Not your head.  Period.  It is a fact.  Now there is plenty of room for debate on what it means culturally to be a male or a female.  There is nothing in our genetics that demands that a female wear pantyhose and shave her armpits while a man wears a suit and a tie.  Nothing genetically that says that females must wear their hair long and males must wear it short.  So there is plenty of room to change and experiment with all the cultural trappings without turning truth on its head.  What I reject is the attempt to erase the objective category of gender and replace it with something nebulous that means nothing.  In certain arenas now, if I want to make sure my gender is clear, I need to refer to myself as something like cisgender female.

Oh brother.

Supposedly, the explanation for this is that "sex" (meaning male/female genetically) and "gender" are two different things.  So we've got to have 50+ options for "gender" so that everyone can feel unique and no one will feel slighted.

Look, I get that people want to feel unique.  I get that they want to feel valued for "who they are."  But why does it matter what gender people are in the first place?  Why did we assign people into categories like male/female to begin with?

Those basic reasons have not changed.  Males-- no matter what gender they feel they are-- cannot conceive, carry, and birth a child.  Females-- no matter what gender they feel they are-- cannot provide the sperm needed to father a child.  As a whole, there are very different physical characteristics between the two sexes.  Many of the cultural difference that have arisen over the years have to do with these basic facts.  Why do we have all girls' sports teams, for example?  Might it have been so that there could be a opportunity for girls to compete on a more fair physical level?  Does it defeat the purpose of having such a team to allow a transgender male to join in?  Or was the team created just so that girls who feel girly can play against other girls who feel girly too?

I could go on here-- maybe I will at another time-- but I guess the point of all my ranting is that I feel a bit adrift lately.  Like the world has gone mad.  I get told over and over from certain segments of society how much race matters ("Black lives matter!") but apparently race is a matter of feeling too, since we can have a NAACP chapter president who "identifies" as black.  Look, as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter one whit if a white woman wants to devote her life to lobbying for black rights.  But if we can "disguise" ourselves based on our feelings, the term race becomes meaningless.  Perhaps for race that's a good thing.  But I'm having a hard time believing that the same thing applies to gender.

Sometimes the world does turn upside down.