Tunesday : Words

Words

(Gibb, Barry /Gibb, Maurice /Gibb, Robin)

Performed by Bee Gees

Smile an everlasting smile
A smile can bring you near to me
Don't ever let me find you gone
'Cause that would bring a tear to me

This world has lost its glory
Let's start a brand new story
Now my love, right now 
There'll be no other time 
And I can show you how, my love

Talk in everlasting words
And dedicate them all to me
And I will give you all my life
I'm here if you should call to me

You think that I don't even mean
A single word I say

It's only words, and words are all I have
To take your heart away

You think that I don't even mean
A single word I say

It's only words, and words are all I have 
To take your heart away
It's only words, and words are all I have 
To take your heart away
It's only words, and words are all I have 
To take your heart away

I had planned to follow up last week's Village People tune with one of my favourite songs from my other favourite disco group. As I said before, I was only allowed to have one poster up on my bedroom wall at a time, and when the Village People came down, the Bee Gees went up: and not that geeky looking (who are those other guys??) album cover I selected for up there, but the poster from the Spirits Having Flown album; all flowing manes and hairy chests (at least for Barry; the only Bee Gee who mattered to me; still not as hunky as little brother Andy). 

I could have shared Love You Inside Out (which gave me the chills as a girl) or Tragedy (and the hil-AR-ious lyrics that kids sang at school: Tragedy! When you're on the john and the paper's gone, it's tragedy!) But in the end, I chose Words just so I could write about something that's been on my mind a lot lately: um, words.

When universal same-sex marriage was legalised in Canada in 2005, Dave and I didn't quite agree on it. Dave -- as a classic liberal despite protesting that he's a conservative-type guy -- thought that it was a non-issue: To him, "marriage" is just a word, and if using that word would make gay people happy, then more power to them. I, on the other hand, believe that words matter and we redefine them at some risk. I know how this makes me sound, so let me be clear: I was horrified by the stories that came out during the early days of the AIDS epidemic, where same-sex partners were denied access to hospitals to visit their dying spouses (because that's for "families" only), or that insurers refused to pay out death benefits to same-sex widows/ers, or even that health insurance that should cover an employee's entire family was denied to same-sex unions: these attitudes were ugly and totally unjust. But these are mainly American stories: health care here in Canada has always been universal and all common-law unions have long been recognised, with same-sex partners enjoying the legal benefits of marriage since 1999. With all of the rights, privileges, and protections of any marriage, all that same-sex couples were missing was the actual word "marriage", and while Dave thought they should have it if they want it, I did (and still do) worry about a social movement having the power to redefine words that have traditionally meant one thing; a definition that we have agreed on as a community for a very long time. 

That doesn't mean that I'm a slippery-sloper: I wasn't one of those bemoaning, "What's next? Legalising polygamy? Bestiality?" I understand that's a stupid argument, but look where we are now. The Canadian government recently introduced a bill, reaffirming that we consider forced and polygamous marriages to be "barbaric" and against our values; giving Immigration the power to block men with multiple wives from coming here. Now I read that Amnesty International is scolding Canada for this position, saying that we're simply forcing the polygamous underground and endangering the forced/child brides. So, are they insisting we should expand the definition of marriage again? Legalise polygamy? It was not that long ago that we all agreed that polygamy was wrong, but shows like Big Love and Sister Wives have likely normalised it -- and while I would agree that what happens amongst consenting adults is totally fine, it's easy to forget that the hard-core polygamous societies are those like in Bountiful, B.C. (where barely teenaged girls are married off to old men, sometimes across national borders) and in Pakistan (where girls can be married off into any situation as young as 10). As for the bestiality, after an article about a John Oliver segment on transgender rights, the top comment was:

Are we soon going to be done with all of this nonsense? Just live and let live. Do whatever you want in the privacy of your own home. It's no one else's business as long as you're not hurting anyone. Enough already. You want to screw a cat. Go ahead. Mess with a monkey. Have at it. I've really had my fill of sexual issues on the news every friggin' night when there are so many other important issues we should be dealing with. 

While I understand that she was trying to be funny, this was the most liked comment and no one was standing up for the rights of those cats and monkeys! (Okay, that's me trying to be funny...) And speaking of John Oliver's segment...

"Woman" is another word that I'm uncomfortable redefining. And again I need to add a caveat: Everyone should be free to express themselves any way they need to and it's a tragedy every time a person feels trapped or discriminated against, or is so hopeless that they commit or even consider suicide. I 100% believe that a person can know that they were born into the wrong body and transitioning to match the outer shell to the inner life is brave and necessary. My comments don't come from hate. Caitlyn Jenner -- whether she really wanted it or not, but as a long-time reality-show figure, I assume she did -- is now the face of transgender issues. And I kind of felt sorry for her when I saw the Vanity Fair cover. I have total empathy for a person who knows she was always a woman trapped in a man's body, but why would this aging grandparent think that "becoming a woman" had to mean "becoming a 1950s pinup"? Jon Stewart -- as the gatekeeper for all right-thinking people -- became sanctimonious about the media's reaction (as though he himself is separate from "the media") in now reducing Jenner to her looks:

"Caitlyn, when you were a man, we could talk about your athleticism, your business acumen," Stewart said. "But now you're a woman, which means your looks are really the only thing we care about."

But, you know what? If Jenner didn't want to be judged on her looks, she would have been wearing a Hillary Clinton pantsuit on that cover; you know, like someone her own age. Being a woman doesn't mean getting double-d implants; I am not less of a woman because I don't have double-ds. So what is a woman now? As a word, "woman" used to have an agreed-upon meaning; one that could be spotted at birth. But now, I understand that The Vagina Monologues is undergoing a rewrite because it's being protested on university campuses; it's considered sexist because not every woman has a vagina. Caitlyn Jenner has apparently not yet decided if she'll get rid of her penis, and although John Oliver's point was that that's none of my business, it's mind-boggling to me that no one is pushing back against this: a woman trapped in a man's body is going to transition...into a woman trapped in a man's body, plus breast implants and hair extensions. Okay, fine. I understand that society has decided that the word "woman" was up for redefinition without a fight, but did no one else really find it unbelievable that Twitter has a bot that automatically changes "he" to "she" in any tweet mentioning Caitlyn Jenner? No one can publicly disagree with the redefinition? As a conservative person, it's the groupthink that bothers me, but okay, it's a fight lost; progressives get to redefine words and the outrage machine of social media gets to attack anyone who disagrees with the newspeak, but what about...

Sport? When the erstwhile Bruce Jenner was a young man, he took gold in an Olympic Decathlon, making his one of the fittest male bodies on the planet. We now learn that even then, Caitlyn was Jenner's true persona, but what does that mean for the future of sport? If Caitlyn was in her youth today, should she be allowed to compete as a woman in the Olympics? There's no money in women's pro sports, but would that change if the WNBA  was filled with transgendered teams? I don't mean to make something out of nothing here, but currently, it's considered a major issue of justice that the Olympics allows transgendered women to compete as women only if they "have legal recognition in their country, hormone therapy to 'minimise gender-related advantages' and proof of at least two years of living in their 'newly assigned gender' after SRS", while not allowing non-surgical trans to compete outside the gender they were born into. Why are transgendered women allowed to compete at all? In what world would it have been fair for Caitlyn Jenner to have competed against women at the Olympics? Why are we who were born as physical women -- we who have had to navigate the embarrassment of first periods, feared walking alone at night, suffered sexism in the workplace, submitted to physically stronger males (even if for me, that just meant my brothers twisting my arm behind my back for a laugh) -- why would we be so willing to look at Caitlyn Jenner today -- someone who has lived 65 years in the privileged life of an American white man, complete with high-profile marriages to desirable women and his photo on boxes of Wheaties -- and say, "Welcome. Based on your say-so, you are 100% the same as I am; 100% woman." And why would we, the so-called weaker sex, welcome an expansion of the word "woman" that would force us out of sport?

And why can we expand the definition of "woman", but not that of "black"? This whole Rachel Dolezal story -- where a white woman self-identifies as black, and therefore lived as a black person, even becoming the President of a NAACP chapter -- is consistently being used to illustrate why Jenner's situation makes sense, but someone like Dolezal is just mentally unbalanced.

Being transracial is hardly similar to ‘feeling black’ … It’s not like gender dysphoria either – the politics of race and gender are not interchangeable in this context. Unlike many black Americans, Rachel’s family background does not carry the trauma of slavery and institutionalised racism.

But unlike born-women, Jenner doesn't have a personal history of gender-based trauma or experienced institutionalised sexism, so what's the difference between her and Dolezal? (Hint: the Social Engineers say so.) Okay, to stretch the point to its ridiculous limit: What about these transabled folks? There are apparently people who feel that they are "disabled" yet stuck in "normal" bodies. These people cut off limbs, blind themselves, break their backs to self-paralyze -- all because their outsides don't match how they feel on the inside. There was a time when a man wanting to have his penis cut off was considered a mental issue, so as society has evolved (correctly, I figure) on that issue, what about the transabled? Should doctors be encouraged to severe spines for those who so desire? Do we change some definitions to avoid offending?

Now, not to keep going on about Jenner, but do men have a problem with redefining the word "Dad"? While glancing over the news headlines on Father's Day, I saw that Caitlyn had posed with the entire Jenner/Kardashian family, but despite looking like I'm overly concerned about these people here, I didn't really care and didn't click for more info, just assuming that all good-thinking people should get the message that becoming a woman didn't stop Caitlyn Jenner from being a Dad. Fine. Know what did bother me? On facebook, I saw a widely shared story on Father's Day with a headline like, "Any woman can be a Mom but it takes a superhero to be a Dad, too". Yes, you gotta be a superhero to be a single Mom, but does raising your kids by yourself make you their Dad, as well? Even in a lesbian household, I would argue that neither of those two women is a Dad. Why did no one push back against that? Why did I see even men sharing that story? Why do I seem to be the only person who worries about these constantly shifting definitions?

In a world where "art" is anything an artist says it is (A shit-smeared Virgin Mary? An unmade bed?), a President at an impeachment hearing can unironically say, "It depends on what your definition of 'is' is", where gender is a "social construct" that has nothing to do with physical attributes, it seems to me that redefining commonly-understood terms undermines the commonly-held beliefs upon which we originally constructed our society. Of course legalising same-sex marriages didn't cheapen or delegitamise my own marriage, but the social forces that convinced people that "marriage" is only a word without an inherent, immutable definition are the same social forces that are saying that nothing is immutable: not gender, not justice, not society (and don't even get me started on God -- even as a concept, it is no longer fashionable to have beliefs of any kind). 

And in the end: It's only words, and words are all I have to take your heart away

*****

Dangit, after spending a couple of hours getting all that off my chest, I go to facebook and see that Mark Steyn said it all today, and better:

Headline from this morning's Politico: 

It's Time to Legalize Polygamy 

Why group marriage is the next horizon of social liberalism 

The right never learns that there is no last concession, only a nano-second's respite to catch your breath and then (to reprise another Kathy Shaidle line) more KY for that slippery slope. 

Someday soon some judge somewhere will rule in favor of polygamy, not because the left is especially invested in this particular "expansion" of rights but because of the opportunities it provides for further vandalism of what's left of the old order. That's what matters. 

That's why the US Supreme Court decision was a twofer for the left. As I said the other day, even if one disagrees, one can respect the process in Dublin (gay marriage by referendum) or London (gay marriage legislated by the people's representatives in parliament). But the American left preferred to go the Supreme Court route - because, if you're hardcore about these things, to divine a right to gay marriage in an 18th century parchment or to insist that "established by the State" refers not primarily to states but to the Secretary of Health and Human Services is a totalitarian act that destroys both law and language by rendering them meaningless: what's not to like? After the incoherence of John Roberts' health-care opinion and then the next day's effusions on the profundity of gay love and loneliness by Anthony Kennedy, the Radclyffe Hall of American jurists, the justices' total capitulation to the zeitgeist is all but complete. Modifying Wonderland's Queen, the Supreme Court of Wonderland seems to work on the principle of "Verdict first - reasoning afterwards, if at all." 

In the gloomier moments of my own case, my lawyers and I occasionally discuss how, if it all goes pear-shaped in DC, we'll be off to SCOTUS. But we're not Larry Flynt in the Eighties anymore. It would seem to me rather complacent to assume these days that there are five votes for free speech at the US Supreme Court.

And I'd like to make one more comment: I intentionally didn't mention the U.S. legalising same-sex marriage because it isn't a true corollary to what happened in Canada in 2005. Until this past week, same-sex unions in the States didn't have the same rights as those enjoyed within traditional marriages, so they were fighting for more than just the word. I'm not impressed that it was the U.S. Supreme Court who decided to impose this by fiat -- any more than I was impressed by our own Chief Justice using the term "cultural genocide" to refer to Canada's past treatment of Natives; a redefinition of terms I was complaining about just yesterday -- and want to agree with Steyn that all of these redefinitions are about vandalism of what's left of the old order. That was my point, too.