Love and Reality

Negotiating the queer spirits of permissive individualism in the context of parental concern.

I have a mechanic - Darcy - who keeps my motorcycle ticking over in top nik, and he speaks the unique Australian dialect of Skilled Tradesman. This linguistic species mostly consists of highly creative formations of impossible bodily vulgarities to describe various complex mechanical arrangements. Speaking to me about less technically demanding subjects than what is wrong with my motorcycle, he once explained to me how he had recently brought some timber, but most of it was “bowed to the f…kery.” As an academic, I am very interested in language and its many uses, and impressed by creative genius wherever I find it. So in trying to convey to you how our intellectual tradesmen (academics) came to work only with metaphysical timbers that were profoundly “bowed to the f….kery”, I have shamelessly borrowed from my mechanic and have done last week’s post on metaphysical dropkickery.

But I am aware that that post was hard work. So I now want to tie off my recent rash of philosophical posts with something relatively short and practical. The question we shall addressed is: should I, as a parent, play my trans-identifying child’s queer language-game with them, or not? More specifically, is it the loving thing to go along with their new “gender-identity”, or is it the loving thing to stick with their real name and real sex-defined pronouns, even if they reject me for it? Whilst words really matter (which is why trans-activists absolutely insist everyone use their lexicon) these question are not just about words.

Every parent of a trans-identifying child is faced with a terrible dilemma. (A), should I “affirm” the “gender-identity” that my progeny self-proclaims, which entails going along with their new self-chosen name, using their new sex-denying pronouns, and “supporting” them through whatever irreversible hormonal and medical ‘gender’ transition they wish to undertake? Or (B), should I not play the trans affirmation language-game, and encourage them to accept their naturally-sexed body as a good and foundational feature of who they really are? If I do (A) I am implicated in the potentially permanent natural-sex disabling of my child. If I do (B) I risk being cut off from my child and labelled an oppressive bigot by them (and others), and they will probably join the trans cult anyway thanks to on-line queer support networks, institutional encouragement, legal protection, and State-mandated gender affirming therapy. So what is the genuinely loving thing to do?

As a parent with experience here I can assure you that the pressure is very strongly on to be “gender affirming”, for this is in keeping with a mainstay social feature of our contemporary lifeworld: permissive individualism. I’ve been reading the astonishing Italian philosopher of last century Augusto Del Noce lately, and he understands how all this works very well. (See his essay, from 1975, “Authority verses Power”.)

According to Del Noce, the crisis of authority is the central crisis of modernity, and it is this crisis that produces a moral imperative to transgress any and every traditional notion of sexual meaning and morality. Del Noce sees this moral imperative as arising from the anti-metaphysical trajectory of the Enlightenment. For once we hold that Truth in any transcendent sense is either unknowable or does not exist, then authority dissolves inexorably into mere force (power). So the morality of permissive individualism is premised on the idea that there is no transcendent right or wrong about sexual ethics, and no moral authority above any individual. But surprisingly, this ‘liberalism’ of moral anarchy produces the need for State-mandated legal force to reach deeply into people’s private lives, because there are now no commonly recognized moral truths. Thus, ‘consent’ is a procedural (not substantive) legal imperative in all matters sexual, but any commitment to moral truths, particularly in the domain of sexual ethics, is now culturally shunned, and often as not, outlawed, as totalitarian.

Our morality of permissive individualism stipulates that whatever anyone wants to do in the pursuit of their own happiness – however they define it – is good, and any attempt to externally limit self-defined meaning and satisfaction (particularly as regards sexual behaviour and identity) is totalitarian and oppressive. By inference, when parents love their children, they will want them to anarchically decide for themselves their own happiness and their own meanings. So it is the loving thing to support whatever choices your child makes as regards their sexuality and “gender-identity”. We don’t want to be prudes or conservative authoritarians, and besides, our children may well reject our authority if we want to suggest that they are making a bad choice and should love their bodies as they naturally are. If they reject our authority but we stick to our guns, they will very likely simply cut us off as oppressive tyrants who have failed to show proper love and respect for their own children. Further, should we parents offend permissive individualism, the State, and State-regulated therapists, will support our children in cutting us off, and may even bring the law to bear on us for “hate speech” crimes of totalitarian bigotry. Speech crimes such as “mis-gendering” (correct-sexing) and “dead-naming” (brith-naming) their own offspring can now get a parent into serious trouble with the law. So the legitimacy of parental love now seems conditional on giving our children total ‘freedom’ and letting them know we unconditionally accept them whatever choices and life-style they choose. From this conception of parental love we must affirmingly support whatever irreversible damage they ‘want’ to do to their bodies, so long as they (at present) think this will provide them with happiness. Back in the pre-trans Dark Ages (before about 2010) most contemporary parents accepted this morality themselves when they were youngsters. Though, when I was a youth, we did not take this logic to its natural end point when it came to mutilating one’s genitals. Even so, traditional categories of sexual morality as tied to sacred and even natural meaning have in point of fact, been out the window for some time now.

But here is the thing. What if metaphysical reality is not oppressive and not unknowable, but is necessary for real human flourishing? What if the real naturally-sexed bodies of our children actually are both good and sacred, and their determination to reject and permanently damage themselves is, in reality, a self-harming tragedy?

I put it to you that any parent viscerally knows that the varrious trans phenomena our children are “affirmed” into embracing are tragic. For one has to overcome the immediate metaphysical knowledge of parental love in order to “affirm” the “transition” of one’s daughter into a fully transitioned transman. It is not eassy to “affirm” one’s daughter as she decides to gets a double mastectomy, surgically removing her natural healthy breasts; as she chooses to have a hysterectomy, surgically removing her natural healthy uterus before she has even considered being a mother; as she chooses to undergo the genital mutilation of phalloplasty; as she chooses to sentence herself to life-long dependence on cross-sex hormones. As parents we know that simply in medical terms, such a “transition” may well entail infertility, sexual dysfunction, and a raft of on-going medical problems that have been entirely artificially produced for one’s daughter. What parent wants that for their child?

As a parent, one must be determinedly unresponsive to the visceral knowledge of parental love in order to be a willing party to the permanent damage of one’s child healthy body in their most intimate sexual capacities. The pressure to go along with this from our culture’s anti-metaphysical permissive individualist morality is intense, but the viscerally known truth obstacle in the reality of our parental love, which our “morality” has to overcome, is no pushover. It is no pushover because love is a natural metaphysical reality, grounded in the Real, and any normal parent has this powerful love for their child. But here, right here (love), there is another problem.

If you want to maintain a stance where you express your love for your child by holding out for what is really good for them, even if it is the opposite of what they say they want, and against what they are strongly being “affirmed” to ‘choose’, you will be seen – by your trans-ideology seduced child – as failing in love for them. Your child can be made to believe that you do not love them when you determinedly stand your ground, out of love for them. This is a type of destructive familial brutality that is all the harder to bear because we have become unable to even articualte what is being done to us, for we have lost the very language of the connection between love and reality. This brutality against parental love takes a deep toll on the mental and physical health of parents. Our love and very reasonable concern for the welbeing of our children is turned inside out and thrown back at us, as if we hate our own child, at the very point where our love is so despirately fighting for them. It takes a toll.

These are the questions this situation raises for parents: what if true love is in fact tied to Truth; and what if truth grounded parental love actually does have transcendently framed authority? These two possibilities are simply outside of the moral and legal categories of permissive individualism. And they are metaphysical contraband in our Enlightenment-framed lifeworld. But the reality of love, and the real goodness of natural healthy bodies has always made endorsing permissive individualism for our children incompatible with good and wise parental love. Why should that be any different now?