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Identity Politics
 [WEEKLYSTANDARD] America was going to have a national conversation about transgender issues, whether we wanted to or not. We're always having a national conversation about something or other. What would be nice would be a month or two of no babble. Our cultural betters decreed we would. The perfectly named Vanity Fair deployed its considerable resources to present the coming out of Caitlyn--née Bruce--Jenner in what it took to be the most favorable and pleasing way possible. Jenner's upcoming reality show about the transition will no doubt be inescapable in a way that will make even the Kardashians in his family envious. "Caitlyn," back when she was "Bruce" won a bunch of Olympic swimming medals and appeared on the Wheaties box. Now, older but probably considerably less wise, he's dressing up in women's clothing, taking women's hormones, and is either about to or already has had his pee-pee chopped off. I'm trying to picture some poor archaeologist firing up the hard drive this has been stored on for eleven thousand years and trying to make sense of it. Americans are not being asked to tolerate the former Olympian's choices, but to deny reality and accept that Jenner is fully a woman, biology notwithstanding. That's the set up.Then the punch line: Now we find ourselves suddenly caught up in a different national conversation about identity, only this time it's causing our progressive overlords a great deal of pain. It recently emerged that Rachel Dolezal, the head of the NAACP chapter in Spokane, is in fact a white woman who has been using creative hairstyling and extravagant application of bronzer to present herself as African American. There's plenty of outrage. But Dolezal's defense of herself is surprisingly difficult to refute by the internal logic of identity politics: "I identify as black." The obvious question on everyone's lips: Why should we have to accept Jenner's declaration that he identifies as a woman if it's an affront for Dolezal to suggest she can be black? Why not? Ward Churchill and Elizabeth Warren identified as Injuns. Al Gore has been identified as a scientist. Al Sharpton has been identified as a reverend. Barak Obama has been identified as a Constitutional Scholar. Brian Williams has identified as a war reporter. Posted by: Fred 2015-06-24 |
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