Recently, I gave a presentation for a Catholic radio fundraiser in Billings, Montana. The morning of my departure, I went down for the hotel breakfast.
Now, the day before, I’d heard the waitress speak of “free breakfast.” So, assuming I was getting a free breakfast, I was surprised when the waitress brought me a bill. “Oh, breakfast is free for kids,” she replied to my query.
“Well,” I said jokingly (but half-serious), “what if I have an inner sense or feeling of being a five-year old?” I think I heard a little “huh?” under her breath.
My intention in making this obvious connection to the transgender debate is not to be cruel or make fun. Rather, it’s to highlight the flawed logic of contemporary gender ideology. If what a “woman” or “man” is can be defined in terms of an inner sense or feeling (called “gender identity”), then why can’t what it means to be five years old be defined in terms of an inner sense or feeling of being five years old? There is nothing in principle to say that it can’t.
I’m not the only one who sees this connection. Consider a fifty-nine-year-old man from Toronto who goes by the name Stefanee Wolscht. He not only has the inner sense or feeling of being a female, but also—in all seriousness—the inner sense or feeling of being a six-year-old female. (Shameless plug: I talk about how such cases exemplify a modern philosophy that threatens the moral and intellectual foundations of our faith in my forthcoming book The New Relativism.)
I wonder if the hotel would have agreed to pretend that Wolscht is a child and given him a free breakfast. If not, then why must it—and we—pretend he’s a woman?
***This was originally published by Catholic Answers Indulgences on March 17, 2023.