Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth

by John C. Wright

  In some places, the men fight with guns, and in others with knives or poisoned-tipped spears; but in all cultures, the fighting role is masculine. Nor does this say that females do not fill fighting role in times of need or emergency, such as when the poverty of the Celtic tribes or the vastly outnumbered military of Israel forces them to expose their daughters to the rigors of war.

  No, what was meant by calling masculinity ‘cultural’ was a hope that a new civilization, not based on any of the values or virtues, philosophy, tradition, standards, faith or morals, laws or customs of our current civilization, would somehow grow out of our own by evolution, or spring from our ashes by revolution, in which the enlightened despots of the future could condition or brain-program the sexless humanoid beings of that era, and turn them into unisex supermen, oops, I mean unisex superhumans.

  In the sextopia of Ungenderland, some humanoids would have breasts and some whiskers, or both or neither, some endowed with penis or womb, or both or neither, but these matters would be merely a question of plumbing, unrelated to psychology, soul, mind, or social expectations. Babies would be raised or slain by the State, or by everybody, or by nobody, and the curse of Eve would be lifted: women would no longer desire men, no longer bear children in pain, and no longer be subject to men.

  Ah, do you doubt me? You think I exaggerate? If anything, I am understating the matter.

  Notice that while persons apparently educated and sane not only think masculinity is cultural ergo open to being re-engineered by society, they are unable to imagine the opposite opinion. Meanwhile, Miss Macfarlane over at Tor.com, (my publisher, I am ashamed to say), writes a manifesto calling for the end of Binary Gender in SF:

  Post-binary gender in SF is the acknowledgement that gender is more complex than the Western cultural norm of two genders (female and male): that there are more genders than two, that gender can be fluid, that gender exists in many forms.

  She means ‘sex’ or perhaps ‘sexual roles.’ The word ‘gender’ refers to words in declined languages.

  She goes on to say:

  I am not interested in discussions about the existence of these gender identities: we might as well discuss the existence of women or men. Gender complexity exists.

  Since she is not interested, I will not address that topic here, nor read one word more of her no doubt fine and fascinating essay.

  But I will address what is betrayed by this unintentional, (and unintentionally hilarious), admission that the matter cannot be debated.

  When Worlds Collide

  This is, of course, the same attitude expressed by the baffled surprise of those who cannot imagine that masculinity or femininity is natural rather than cultural.

  The Left cannot see both sides of any issue. They cannot, (or dare not), treat any rival viewpoints with respect, not even the respect needed to address or refute them. This alleviates the Left from the burden of actually meeting a burden of proof, indeed, of actually making any argument at all. They just ask opposing viewpoints to shut up.

  The great selling point of the Left, the great promise of Political Correctness, is that all issues are orthodox and settled, and the great debate of the human condition, all the mysteries of life, no longer are open to discussion. The matter is closed. Talk must stop. Correct thinking is true; incorrect thinking is heresy. You must shut up. You must shut up. You must shut up.

  And the burden of human reasoning, the torment of the paradoxes of life, the need for learning, education, or curiosity is done away with. Everything the faithful need know can be printed on a bumper sticker, and chanted as a mantra or a mob-slogan at a rally.

  It would be an insult to religion to call this a religion. Real religions take their theology seriously, and debate hairsplitting nuances of phrase over centuries to arrive at precise truth. Cults are not serious. Cults chant slogans. Leftism is a cult.

  No theology can be reduced to a slogan, even if it can, (at times), be reduced to a credo or formula. The Incarnation, the idea that Jesus was both fully God and fully Man can be uttered in a sentence, or even a single word, but the theological implications of that will puzzle and awe the saints and angels forever.

  What is most annoying is that the partisans of the Left deserve something better than Leftism. Feminism, at its root, is a just and noble idea: the idea of women enjoying the same civil rights as men. In its freakish corrupt form, feminism is just another excuse for the abolition of all moral norms, the abolition of humanity.

  The idea of Women’s Liberation can be said in two or three words, but the implications will puzzle and exasperate the feminists forever; nor will the feminists of one wave ever agree with their sisters in another. “Equality for Women” is, in fact, a theological statement, a mystery of faith, a paradox as puzzling as the paradox of the Incarnation.

  A woman in America has the right to vote and to own property in her own name—but what other rights, real or not, must be protected, or invented, or bestowed, in order to achieve the utopia?

  Some are more reasonable than others. The right to be chaste without social repercussion? The right to be promiscuous without social repercussion? The right to dress, talk, and act like a man? The right to urinate in a urinal? The right to force all employers to grant equal pay for equal work? The right to commit abortion? The right to marry a lesbian? The right to force the Roman Catholic Church to pay for the abortion and perform the lesbian marriage? The right to force the Roman Catholic Church to pay for the lesbian marriage while performing the abortion on the marriage altar with one bride while the other bride is urinating in a urinal?

  The right to force the sperm donor to pay for the childrearing of a lesbian couple once the couple breaks up, and no longer wishes to raise the child together?

  This last is a real case. I am not making it up. I note with considerable wry irony and perhaps a pinch of schadenfreude that a culture which has tried its level best to divorce all sexual matters from nature and sanity, until we have lesbian so-called families attempting to rear a fatherless child in imitation of the Virgin Mary, nonetheless retains at least one judge who does not allow that a man can use his seed to father a child without incurring the responsibilities of fathering a child; in this case, supporting the single mom after a lesbian so-called divorce.

  You see, in the case of the Sperm Donor and the Lesbians, two worlds collided.

  In the first world, the world of reality, the child that grows from a man’s sperm is his child, and he is responsible for it. The institution of marriage serves many purposes, but the primary purpose is to make fathers responsible for rearing the children they father.

  In the second world, modern science allows sexual reproduction to take place without the sex act, hence without marriage, hence without laws and customs to prevent improvident fathering of children in situations where both parents are not present to rear them. In the second world, modern acceptance of contraception allowed the growth of the false-to-facts emotional fixation on sex as distinct from reproduction. First a small group, then a larger, than nearly the whole society developed an emotional complex utterly antithetical to reality, that is, a. neurosis. This neurosis treats the sex act as a subjective emotional and physical experience unrelated to the act of sexual reproduction; this in turn is unrelated to the pleasures and duties and social roles of childrearing; this in turn is unrelated to the pleasures and duties and social roles of marriage.

  In the first world, fornication is forbidden, and women are frequently segregated from men so as to prevent even the opportunity for fornication to arise.

  In the second world, the sex act has no bearing on sexual reproduction, hence no bearing on childrearing, hence no bearing on marriage.

  In the second world, this sexless form of marriage becomes nothing more than a legal and social sanction to an emotional relationship, either permanent or not, as the partners wish.

  If sex means the emotional and physical act of stimulating the sexual organs, then one can have ‘sex’ (b
y this odd definition) as easily with one’s own sex as with the opposite sex: or, for that matter, with children, corpses, animals, or inanimate objects.

  According to the fashions of the moment, this second group is still considered perverse, but the consideration is a matter of sentiment and not logic: that is, an arbitrary reason can distinguish them (for example, capacity to give consent) but no reason actually pertinent to sexual reproduction.

  If you doubt me, ask a partisan of sexual liberation why copulating with one’s adult sister, (with her consent of course), or with a menstruating fourteen-year old, (with the parent’s consent, of course), or with the corpse of one’s wife, (with her permission granted in her last will and testament, of course), or with an ape, (assuming she gave consent in sign language to the best of her ability, of course; or her owner gives consent on her behalf), in each case where actual coupling takes place, is evil, sick and perverted, whereas sexually stimulating the private parts of a person of one’s own sex, a situation where no copulation can take place, is nonetheless a cherished and romantic fulfillment of utterly natural longings which law, custom, society, public opinion, and the Roman Catholic Church must not only tolerate, but support, applaud, and approve. Ask them.

  The partisans of the Sexual Revolution will not give you an argument, merely sneer, or shriek, or pretend to faint like an overexcited Victorian matron, or call you names like a schoolyard bully, hack your Wikipedia page, send hate mail, ad nauseam. They will not give reasoning, by which I mean a structured line of deduction from identified axioms to valid conclusions.

  This is not to say an argument cannot be made. I heard and read such arguments commonly enough in my youth. But that was half a century ago. These days a syllogism is a thing many a college graduate has never formed, no, not once. We live in an age of gullibility, where all statements are taken on authority, but always on the authority of anonymous academics, jurists, entertainers, pundits, and bureaucrats who are never, no, not once, asked to produce a warrant of authority. We live in an age of emotion, especially the emotion of offended self-righteousness.

  You may be more successful than I, and can, perhaps, find someone willing and able to construct an argument in favor of Sexual Liberation that does not logically necessitate the legalizing of everything from algolagnia to zoophilia; but he is as rare as the bearded lady. Yet I suspect you will find “I am not interested in discussions about…” to be the standard response, with few exceptions, or none.

  Rome Has Spoken

  There are many valid reasons why a particular topic cannot be broached in polite company.

  First is that the company is met for another purpose, and that certain topics are so fraught with emotion or so complex with so many ramifications, that the social cost of holding a debate at that time and place exceeds the good of talking. This is why gentlemen do not discuss politics at dinner parties, or at work, or discuss the merits of their previous sweethearts with their wives on the honeymoon, or discuss the most effective methods of torture while addressing a grammar school class.

  However, in no case is this reason universally valid to silence debate—particularly in the places and at the times when debate is allowed, encouraged, or necessary. The pages of an editorial, particularly an editorial advocating radical and permanent changes to the lives, virtues, values, and norms of society, cannot silence debate on the grounds that ladies are present, and discussing politics will spoil the dinner party.

  Second is that one has no qualifications to have an opinion on the topic, or that all the facts are not in.

  In no case does this reason allow you to prevent another man from talking, only you yourself, and only in areas where expertise is required, and you lack that expertise. In a democracy, or on a jury, every free man is assumed to have the basic knowledge of right and wrong, sick and hale, sane and insane, which the Abolishers wish to abolish. No one is disqualified from holding and promoting an opinion about the sickness of sexual perversion on the grounds that he has no doctorate in the area. The moral law natural to man is known to all who have achieved the age of reason.

  Third is that the other party in the discussion has retreated, will not answer questions, or has nothing to say while never shutting up. I pass lightly over the question of why Abolishers, of all people on Earth, ought not use this excuse to back politely out of a conversation.

  Fourth is that the matter truly is settled by an authority to whom you and your debate partner must refer all questions to be satisfied.

  If I report the diameter of the Earth based on the experiments and calculations of Eratosthenes of Cyrene, or the distances to the sun and moon based on based on measurements taken by Aristarchos of Samos, and I cannot satisfy you, it is not unseemly of me to refer you to those authorities and have you take up your argument with them. If I am aware that I cannot give an argument more clear than the original I am repeating, humility, if nothing else, dictates that I direct you to wiser minds and that I step aside.

  Likewise, while I am aware, in a general way, of the arguments for the Big Bang and against the Steady State theory, I could not win an argument against Fred Hoyle. My golden tongue is not so golden as that. I could do no more than refer him to Georges Lemaître, and bow out.

  But note that at no point while bowing out of a conversation one is not qualified to hold is it legitimate to accuse one’s opponent of disqualification. To say, “Argument from Authority is the strongest form of argument, as many eminent people will attest!” is a joke, not an argument.

  Likewise, saying “Global Cooling is Settled Science! The consensus of opinion says… etc.” is an informal logical error. It is another way of saying “Shut Up.”

  Just this morning on the news, I heard an article saying that school officials oppose a proposed law to teach the children critical thinking about science, by offering more than one point of view, on the grounds that it may provoke children into questioning matters of settled opinion, such as Darwinian Evolution or Global Warming. I am not making this up, not kidding, not exaggerating. The Abolishers are not even bothering to pretend to be honest. Their express reason for opposing teaching children how to think is that they want non-Left points of view to shut up.

  Of course, this is a favorite tactic of Abolishers, which is why all the nonsense and offal they utter is asserted to be expert opinion, but any attempt to track down an authority to its source ends up being a maze paved with paper. The authorities being quoted are all anonymous. The experts, upon examination, turn out to be journalists, academics in other fields, political operatives, bureaucrats, paid hacks, and so on.

  The Abolisher obsession with detailed statistics generated by allegedly scholarly studies, now that the scientific field is as utterly politicized as the journalistic, is a pathetic attempt to win arguments by false and meretricious authority. No attempt is made to establish the credentials of the authority beforehand. And, in any case, few men are patient enough to look at the actual numbers, who understand the pitfalls of statistics and know what statistics can and cannot prove.

  Fifth is that the subject matter is ineffable. If I am discussing how I know my wife loves me, or why I am stirred by Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, or a mystical experience of the oneness of Creation, mere words fail, and I must fly to poetry and music, the language of heaven, or fall mute, the language of awe.

  Legal and moral issues, however, are not ineffable, but are open to as much clarity and precision as any philosophical issue.

  Sixth is that the point in dispute is a dogma, part of a theological system accepted on faith in its entirety, or else rejected in its entirety. Dogma is accepted, if at all, upon faith in the authority of the man or institution (or divine being) proposing the dogma.

  As with other matters resting on authority, it is permissible to disqualify oneself from defending an issue which one believes only for another’s sake. If a child is asked by her father for his sake to believe a certain matter, she cannot argue the point. Loyalty to her fa
ther, and her own awareness of her own inadequacy, prevents her from entertaining questions on the matter.

  Now, a dogma can indeed be questioned by anyone willing to question his entire loyalty to whatever authority is asking for his consent, but then the particular matter is subsumed into a greater question. In this example, to question the daughter’s dogma, the point to be discussed is the legitimacy of the authority of her father. That point is always open to question.

  Except among Progressives, of course. They are devoted to the Unreality Principle.

  Their system is as dogmatic as Catholicism; the difference being that we are honest about it and they are not.

  When our Pope makes a statement Ex Cathedra, or invokes the doctrine of Papal Infallibility, or a General Council settles a dispute about some theological point, such as the divinity of Christ, we admit it. We admit we are sheep following a shepherd, whom we love.

  When the vague consensus of anonymous opinion-makers, however, invokes the Leftwing equivalent of Liberal Infallibility, and speaks Ex Cathedra, and suddenly decrees some absurdity, such as the doctrine that gays are to be thrown under the bus for Islam, the no one who follows the authority of the vague consensus admits it. The freethinkers all pretend that they each man independently came to the same opinion as the received dogma. They are sheep pretending to be lone wolves, and they fear their alpha wolves turning on them and rending them. They fear being denounced as a bigot, (or whatever the meaningless swear word of the day is).

  So the dogmatic reason for disqualifying oneself from debate is legitimate, but at this price: one must be honestly willing, then, to give whatever reason one has for placing faith in the authority whose dogma one receives. It is not the end of the debate, but the opening of a deeper one. Any Christian not ready to give a reason for the hope he has within him is disobeying Christian teaching.