Mona Charen has an article on Meghan Murphy, a feminist journalist who was recently banned from Twitter for writing "men are not women." One of Murphy's thought crimes consisted of asking, in response to someone else, "How are transwomen not men? What is the difference between a man and a transwoman?" That challenge, not an epithet, earned her a warning. She also referred to a trans-identified male as "he" — that is the forbidden practice of "misgendering." She also was guilty of so-called "deadnaming" — using the former name of a person who transitioned to the other sex.
According to Charen, "Murphy, along with many feminists and some conservatives, resists the trans movement's efforts to permit people who are born male to enter women's restrooms, locker rooms, prisons and other environments where, as Murphy puts it, 'women feel uncomfortable seeing a penis.'" And, "Murphy's website, Feminist Current, has questioned the science and ideology behind transgenderism, and Murphy is indignant that people with XY chromosomes can compete in women's sports."
The usual suspects in arbitrary and opinion-driven personal infringements are governmental and/or bureaucratic; here it is a private company. And what is involved is how we manage, in Charon's phrase, "this sudden reimagining of what it means to be human ." The nature of man has been considered and debated for as long as man has thought. What is new here is not the curiosity but rather the furious acceptance of a marginal and arbitrary position that is both imposed and beyond appeal.
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