What Does the Modern Malleability of Gender and Race Mean for the Future of Affirmative Action?

I don’t think Victor Davis Hanson is trying to be funny in this post, but it’s hard not to laugh at what the political left is pushing these days…

In the present postmodern world, we are told that there is no such thing as a biologically distinct gender. Instead, gender is now socially constructed. It can be defined by the individual in almost any way he or she sees fit.

In the old days, many clinical psychologists would have believed that Caitlyn Jenner — who first came to fame as Olympian Bruce Jenner — is experiencing a well-chronicled psychological state known as transvestism, or the innate pleasure in wearing the clothes and assuming the manners and appearance of the opposite sex.

Jenner, however, identifies as transgendered. But even if the term is new, the condition is not. References to people acting or dressing as if they were members of the opposite sex — or somewhere in between — were commonly found in the works of ancient authors such as Catullus and Petronius. The difference is that the Greeks and Romans saw it as a psychosexual condition, while today’s postmoderns insist that the transgendered have assumed a self-constructed and genuinely new sexual identity.

Have they really?

After all, many female athletes object to the idea that biologically distinct and often bigger and stronger males can declare that they are female and compete as transgendered women in prestigious athletic contests.

Could a younger Bruce Jenner, after winning the men’s decathlon at the 1976 Olympics, have reconstructed his gender identity and won again in 1980 as eligible female competitor Caitlyn?

Read more: www.victorhanson.com