Question thyself

Be proud of yourself. Be satisfied with yourself. Be happy with who you are. Be you, despite what other people think of you. I hear those vapid platitudes so much that I want to scream. I want to ask, I want to yell at the top of my lungs, 'But what if you're an asshole?'

It is shallow thought my friends. No one, and I mean no one, is justified in what they do only because of who they may think they are. The unexamined life, it is said, is not worth living. And it is not. If I must question myself, and I most certainly must, then why not must you question you?

Answer that question to my debit, and I might allow that your chosen lifestyle may be valid. Yet so long as you direct that question only at me, then I am playing fair to point out that you are merely selfish. And that is not fair to conservatives like me.

Gender Identity is Obvious

What's wrong with gender? Why can't we be boys or girls, seeing as that's what we all really are?

A Nebraska school district has issued a handout which purports to deal with 'gender identity issues', whatever that means. We've labored under the impression that your gender is what you're born with, but apparently we need to discover our 'authentic selves', whatever that means. The handout was developed by a group calling itself (itself seems the appropriate term here) Gender Spectrum. They're the ones seeking their authentic selves, unlike the rest of us simple males and females who aren't seeking anything like that. Indeed, if we have a decent sense of self, we aren't seeking anything like that at all.

There are times when we don't know what to say. This is one of them. What do you say to someone who doesn't know what they are, when the choices are pretty obvious? You're a guy or a gal; it doesn't seem necessary, or wise, to go beyond that. Quite honestly, it doesn't seem as though there can be any confusion about that. Unless, perhaps, you want to be confused.

And there's the rub. What we have here is a prime example of the tyranny of the individual: I'm whoever I say I am. I won't be defined by society. I won't even by defined by my DNA. I'm me, gosh darn it, and no one is going to place a definition on me except me.

Well, sister, or brother, or, or, it, we've got news for you. Society is going to define you, and the terms it will use will be accurate if not pretty. Only decorum prevents us from printing them here. But trust us: the labels are indeed accurate.