Last week, the Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles took a gas can full of gasoline, poured its contents all over social media, lit a match, and then threw it onto the fuel-soaked collection, setting it ablaze like a scene out of the movie “Backdraft.”
When Knowles took the stage at the latest CPAC, he declared that “transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely” and that such an undertaking would be “for the good of society.”
Not surprisingly, the activist media melted down, with left-leaning outlets intimating that Knowles wishes to lead a mass genocide against the transgender community despite the fact that the Daily Wire podcaster had yet to clarify his remarks, likely because he was deliberately courting the controversy. Y’all know how the world of political commentary works, don’t you?
I wrote a piece speculating as to what Knowles may have meant when he uttered those words. I surmised that he might have meant defeating progressive transgender ideology on the battlefield of ideas – an approach I would support. Others suggested using the government to deal with the matter.
But now Knowles has published an op-ed on the Daily Wire in which he explains his position. In the piece, he explains that the ideology “posits that a person with all the physical signs of a man might really be a woman, and vice versa.” He continued:
The nominalist and materialist varieties of transgenderism hold that such an unexpected sexual identity arises through sheer tyranny of will: that is, that there is no meaningful, objective reality to the categories of “man” and “woman,” and so surgical mutilation or even simple assertion suffices to make a person male, female, or neither.
Knowles goes on to address those who “prefer a laissez-faire approach to delusional political movements,” and acknowledges that a “pluralistic society can tolerate a great deal of diversity and eccentricity” but that it “cannot tolerate everything precisely because ideas have consequences, and those consequences affect other people.”
The author goes on to explain that in American law, the country has “only recently began to adopt the mistaken metaphysics of transgender ideology” and reminds us of the North Carolina debate over military policy and transgender bathrooms in 2015.
“Already, after just eight years, we see its poisonous fruit: skyrocketing rates of transgender identification among children, who have been mutilated and castrated to affirm the false anthropology, as well as subsequent soaring rates of ‘transition’ regret among children who trusted their parents, teachers, and doctors not to mislead them into irreversible damage; the preventable rape of girls by men in women’s bathrooms, two such cases of which led a rightly angry public to elect a new governor in Virginia; the theft of girls’ awards and scholarships by men who naturally overpower them in every sport; and so on,” Knowles writes.
Knowles is right.
Transgender ideology has led to an America in which K-12 schools and medical facilities are actively promoting among children the idea that one can change their gender by taking dressing differently, changing one’s name, taking questionable medical treatments, and having irreversible surgical procedures. I have written extensively about this problem.
So what is his solution?
He suggests altering or eliminating laws that ostensibly contribute to the problem.
“Our own country could once again eradicate transgenderism from public life with no more than a few tweaks to the law: the overturning of some recent statutes and regulations alongside the overruling of a recent Supreme Court decision that abolished civil rights on the basis of sex in favor of civil license on the basis of incoherent ‘gender identity.’”
The author ends by suggesting that “as long as those ideas are allowed to fester, worse consequences will follow.”
This solution was quite disappointing, to say the least. Yes, I agree that the government should not be promoting transgenderism nor should lawmakers be creating laws designed to accommodate folks who make up a tiny percentage of the U.S. population.
But the notion that reversing and eliminating these laws would have a significant impact on the issue ignores an essential reality: The government is not equipped to handle this problem. State rule is rarely a viable solution for problems that are societal in nature. If what Knowles recommends were to come to pass, transgenderism would still be every bit as prevalent in the culture as it is now.
We have to combat this deceptive ideology through the culture – by using persuasion and influence. This is a much more difficult prospect as the hard left has control over nearly all of the country’s major institutions; especially those used to communicate ideas. But this does not mean it is impossible. Indeed, through the use of alternative media conservatives and libertarians have been able to influence many across the country.
We have to be willing to speak out against transgender ideology – and all other pernicious ideas for that matter. The non-woke crowd has to become louder than the woke.
Of course, this is not to say the government has no role in this. Officials must ensure the ideology is not being presented to small children in K-12 schools. They must prevent educational and medical institutions from violating parental rights and “transitioning” kids behind their parents’ backs. They have to stop the use of puberty blockers and irreversible surgeries from being performed on minor children.
But when it comes to adults, the government has little role to play. If we want to create a more healthy society, it’s up to us, not the state.
