Good one, via Instapundit.
"The Caitlyn (née Bruce) Jenner case has engendered if not a new subject
at least a newly publicized and sensationalized one. For an old-timer
like myself, transgenderism is reminiscent of the postmodernism that
swept the universities several decades ago. Indeed, transgenderism now
looks like a more dramatic, audacious, and, it may be, perilous form of
postmodernism. Like postmodernism back then, so transgenderism today is
moving very far, very fast. Before it goes much further, one might look
back upon its predecessor as a cautionary tale, recalling its
aspirations but also its tribulations."
"We might wish to take comfort today in the thought that after the
initial enthusiasm for transgenderism has subsided, a more wary approach
to the real problems of sexual dysfunction may prevail. So some of us
once thought in the case of postmodernism. When postmodernism began to
lose its novelty about the turn of the century, it looked as if the
humanities might revert to type—poetry retrieved from the literary
critic, history recalled as narrative, philosophy rediscovered in the
classics. But that reprieve was short-lived. If postmodernism is no
longer the modish term it once was, it is because its spirit has been so
integrated in the culture that it no longer needs affirming or
controverting. One can only hope that it won’t require a new abyss, a
new de Man, to transcend transgenderism."
I predict there will be many generations of misery and many preventable suicides before this fad reaches its denouement.
