This is a response to critics of my piece "Death of the West: Our Sexual Identity Crisis." It originally appeared at American Thinker.

By Selwyn Duke

Because of the controversy this
article has evoked, the editor of American Thinker, Thomas Lifson, has
requested that I address some of the criticisms I’ve received.  And I am happy to do so, as it’s obvious that
some critics haven’t read the whole piece, have only skimmed it, or reacted to it
so emotionally that they couldn’t digest what was actually written.

Now, let’s start with the more
obvious misunderstandings.  I mentioned
in the piece the father of “gender neutrality” theory, Dr. John Money.  Yet despite making it plain that I understood
his theory and rejected it, some assumed I was conflating his ideas with
today’s prevailing belief that “gender identity” has a biological basis and
cannot be changed through conditioning. 
This is mainly, I believe, because I referred to today’s “transgender”
theorists as “today’s Dr. Moneys.” 

But the problem wasn’t that I
misunderstood the ideas in question but that certain readers misunderstood
me.  At different points throughout the
piece I made it very clear that today’s psycho-babblers were saying very much
the opposite of what Money propounded. 
In fact, I began the discussion of today’s prevailing theory by writing,
“Worse still, they have now moved on to their next mistake.”  That I wrote “next mistake” should have made
it clear that I understood that today’s ideas are very different from Money’s.

So why did I refer to some present-day
mental health professionals as today’s Dr. Moneys?  Because just as people listened to Money 35
years ago, there are many who unquestioningly accept the theories of these
people today.  They have the same kind of
influence.  Moreover, their theory shares
something in common with Money’s: neither accords with common sense.  They both take an extreme view, proclaim it
dogma, impugn those who reject it as being ignorant, and claim millennia of
man’s tradition is wrong.

Now, having said this, I don’t
dismiss science.  Neither, however, do I
bow down at its altar.  I read about its
latest findings and theories and often find many of them every
interesting.  But then I do something
that is grossly out of fashion: I evaluate them under the light of Truth.  This is something any wise person does.

Yet there are those who
criticize me for supposedly being unaware of psychology’s latest notions (yes,
“notions”), as if someone in the media who isn’t Charlie Gibson (who didn’t
know about the ACORN story) could have avoided being inundated with them for
the last 15 years.  But it’s not that I’m
oblivious to them; it’s that I tend to reject them.  I take G.K. Chesterton’s view, that common
sense is “that forgotten branch of psychology.”

As for the specifics here, I’m
well-aware of the brain anomalies and chromosomal abnormalities that can exist
and influence sexual development.  I also
realize that they have been discovered by hard scientists, not soft ones.  And let me make my position on abnormal
sexual development clear.  If someone is
born suffering with such a problem — let’s say, hermaphrodism (you can use the
term “intersex” if you wish, but I don’t glom onto the latest lexical fads) —
the best effort to ascertain the person’s true sex should be made, and then he
should be helped to live as normal a life as possible as a member of that
sex.  That’s just common sense.  But note that these determinations should be
based on facts, not feelings.  This
brings us to the crux of the matter.

I don’t have a problem with
recognizing legitimate physical or chromosomal abnormalities.  What is very destructive, however, is
treating feelings as if they are credible
arbiters of reality.  Yet, protest
all you want, this is precisely what is done in this debate and so many
others.  The psycho-babblers today put
tremendous stock in “persistent” feelings of this or that, as if it doesn’t
matter whether or not they accord with objective reality because there is no
objective reality.  This is folly.

Now, there is something my
critics have done that is very telling. 
While some have put forth some very compelling and literate arguments,
every single one of them avoided addressing a certain point I made regarding
using emotion as a yardstick.  Here it is:

. . . one
of the problems with emotion is that it is by its very nature irrational. 
And if anyone would defend an emotion-based diagnosis such as "gender
dysphoria," note that it's brought to us by the same psycho-babblers who
have given us something dubbed "body dysmorphia."  This is this
persistent feeling that a certain body part, such as an arm or leg (or multiple
body parts), doesn't belong on one's body.  And if you think it isn't
taken seriously, know that doctors have amputated
healthy limbs on this basis.

Be
shocked — that is, unless you accept "gender dysphoria" as
legitimate.  Then you'd better be introspective.  For what is the
difference?  Why would you accept the emotion-based diagnosis of gender
dysphoria but not the emotion-based one of body dysmorphia?  Why are the
feelings of those who suffer from the latter invalid but the feelings of those
who suffer from the former a credible arbiter?  Both groups have
persistent feelings that their bodies aren't as they should be.  Both
groups cannot bear to live in their bodies as they are.  Both groups want
to have their bodies altered.  And both groups have found
"experts" willing to put them under the knife.  Sure, it strikes
us as the most horrid malpractice when a doctor amputates healthy body parts,
such as a pair of legs.  But, then, should we call it something else just
because those healthy body parts are between the legs?

I ask you, why would my critics
behave as if this point was never made? 
Some would think it’s because they can’t really refute it.  But let’s expand on this a bit.

Now, as my above example
illustrates well, feelings simply cannot be used as arbiters of reality.  It really doesn’t matter what idea you think
of — it doesn’t matter how preposterous it is — someone’s feelings will tell
him it’s reality.  So, let’s say, for
argument’s sake, that the critics are correct in saying that you can have the
brain of one sex in the body of the other. 
Are you going to assert that this is the case every time a person feels he should have the body of the opposite
sex?  Are you saying that there’s never a
case in which — in just the same way feelings can incorrectly tell one that a
limb doesn’t belong on his body — a person’s feelings incorrectly tell him he
should be the opposite sex?  Never,
ever?  Come on.

As Thomas Jefferson said,
“Passion governs, and she never governs wisely.”  It is madness to exalt feelings the way we
have today in our relativistic age, an age in which, because we are oblivious
to Truth, emotion is the only yardstick we have left for making decisions.  And this applies to everything, not just the
issue at hand.  So if you want to make
the case for “gender dysphoria” or anything else, go ahead.  But you’d better find a basis for it in
Truth, in objective reality.  It is
lunacy to look anywhere else.

The last thing I’ll address is
the idea that we have to socially re-engineer society to accommodate
abnormalities, that we in fact should do this to such an extent that the very
idea of normality will be discredited so that there will be nothing viewed as
abnormality.  This is not only
destructive, it’s evil.

Of course abnormalities exist,
and those suffering from them should be treated with compassion.  But the majority, mankind itself, should also
be treated with compassion.  And there is
nothing compassionate about destroying norms that constitute the glue binding
civilization together.

What I mean is, some think it’s
liberating to spread the idea that, well, you can be just whatever you want to
be — a man, woman, something in-between or something different entirely — it’s
whatever works for you.  They often
defend this with the silly idea that everything is inborn and that this is
synonymous with it being positive, so you won’t become anything you “shouldn’t”
be anyway.  Besides, you can’t trump
nature.

But this is the same kind of
radicalism of which Dr. Money was guilty. 
Just as he assumed everything was nurture, today’s fashions say
everything is nature.  Yet wise people
have long understood that man is shaped by a combination of the two.  Conditioning matters.

This is why this feelings-rule,
whatever-works-for-you theory is so destructive.  Loosed from the guiderails of morality and a proper
conception of normality, people who would otherwise not descend into
abnormality will do so.  This is a
fact.  This is because people are flawed;
they often go through phases where they have strange temptations, feelings that
will go away if they aren’t indulged. 
And it is only that instruction manual for operating man, morality, that
allows them to distinguish between what should be indulged and what should be
purged.

This malleability of man is
indisputable.  As to this, most of us
have seen documentaries about primitive tribes. 
There is one tribe in which all the men run around with long, thin cones
on their private parts; there is another in which the members incrementally add
metal rings to their necks to make their necks longer.  We also know that the Japanese used to bind
women’s feet and that some Muslim societies advocate female circumcision.  The point is that people can be conditioned
to accept most anything as normal.  This
doesn’t mean, however, that they’ll be happy, prosperous and psychologically
healthy in such a state.

Now, more to the point here,
this malleability has been demonstrated in the area of sexuality as well.  We know, for instance, that in ancient
Spartan military camps, a 12-year-old boy would be attached to a man in his
20s, who would become the boy’s mentor — and lover.  We aren’t sure exactly what behaviors were
indulged, mind you, but it’s clear that these relationships were homosexual.

Would any of you say that every
single one of these men, or even a majority, had a gene for homosexuality?  No, this obviously is an example of the power
of conditioning.  It is undeniable that
nurture can play a very powerful role in shaping man’s behavior.

This is why it’s so destructive
to convince people that whatever they want to do is just peachy keen because
it’s all “natural” (inborn) anyway (not to mention the justification that
there’s no Truth so nothing can be wrong). 
Whether you believe our nature is naturally flawed or supernaturally fallen,
it’s obvious that it is flawed.  Thus,
errant instincts must be identified and tamed. 
And this is a prerequisite for maintaining civilization.  Man will go awry — and badly so — unless
governed by a correct conception of moral reality.

If we normalize abnormality,
more people will descend into it.  If we
say there is no perversion, more people will become perverted.  And if we say there is no Truth, no right or
wrong, more people will do wrong.  That
is the way it is, the way it always has been, and the way it always shall be.

                     © 2009 Selwyn Duke — All Rights Reserved