Woke Gender Identity Ideology is suicidal.
No. I don’t mean that Woke Gender Identity Ideology (WGII) causes the individual who believes WGII to be suicidal. If Sally believes in WGII, WGII can’t force her to do anything. Ideas can’t force anyone to do anything. What I mean is that the idea, or concept, of WGII itself is a fatally flawed one. It kills itself philosophically. And is therefore necessarily false. Which means no one should believe it.
Let me explain.
What is WGII? WGII says that an individual is what they identify as.
For example, Linkedin published an article titled “15 Gender Identity Terms You need to Know to Build an Inclusive Workplace.” In it, the author says that gender is less about biology or physiology than it is about one’s “lived experience.”
“So when we talk about a person’s gender identity,” she writes, “we’re talking about their own deeply felt understanding of who they are.”
In other words, an individual isn’t what they are biologically or physiologically—they are what they identify as.
Here’s how to prove Woke Gender Identity Ideology is false.
A claim is false if it contradicts itself. “A square is a circle,” “A bachelor is a married man,” “1 is 2,” “A is B,” are all claims that contradict themselves. Because a square is not a circle—a square is a square. A bachelor is not a married man—a bachelor is an unmarried man. 1 is not 2—1 is 1. A is not B—A is A. WGII leads to contradictions which make it as untrue as the claim “1 is 2.”
Think about it:
If an individual’s identifying as something makes that individual that thing, then if I identify as a person who lives in a world in which WGII does not exist, then WGII should not exist. But it does exist (because the Woke Left still claims it’s true in the world), therefore WGII is false.
Or, if I identify as a person who lives in a world in which there are no individuals who identify as the sex they biologically are not, there should not be any individuals who identify as the sex they biologically are not. But there are individuals in the world who identify as the sex they biologically are not. Therefore, WGII is false.
Or—try this one on for size!—if I identify as a person who lives in a world in which WGII is false, then WGII should be false in this world. But if WGII is false in this world, then it is false and no one should believe it.
Use your imagination to identify as a person who lives in any kind of world that is not the real world: a world with unicorns; with flying pigs; with no light; with bank accounts for everyone with a balance of $10 million. If the world doesn’t immediately match what you identify as, then the claim that “an individual is what they identify as,” and therefore WGII, is not true.
Ideologies like Woke Gender Identity Ideology lead to absurd conclusions that render them necessarily false ideologies. In other words, WGII refutes itself like the claim “1 is 2” refutes itself. WGII is fatally flawed because it kills itself. A philosopher would say that WGII is “self-referentially incoherent.” I just say it’s dead on arrival.
And the Woke Left agrees with me, they just don’t know it yet.
For example, the Woke Left support strict COVID-19 lockdowns. They (sometimes agressively) support the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Dr. Anthony Fauci’s guidance to wear a mask in public and to get the Moderna or Pfizer or Johnson & Johnson mRNA “vaccine.” But what if I, as someone who isn’t wearing a mask and who isn’t vaccinated, were to identify as someone who is wearing a mask and who is vaccinated? Would the Woke Left accept me as that which I identify? I don’t think they’d be as tolerant and inclusive in that case as they claim to be.
Why? Because simply identifying as masked and vaccinated doesn’t make me physiologically mask and vaccinated. The Woke Left would still consider me a threat to the safety of their health.
But—and, ironically—that’s the same argument conservatives make against Woke Gender Identity Ideology. Though a man claims to be a woman, that man is not in fact physiologically a woman. Though a woman claims to be a man, that woman is not in fact physiologically a man. Conservatives would still consider the destruction of conservative, Christian family values a threat to Western civilization, and therefore a threat to the progress and flourishing of humanity.
So if my identifying as masked and vaccinated doesn’t make me masked and vaccinated, then a man’s identifying as a woman doesn’t make him a woman, and a woman’s identifying as a man doesn’t make her a man. The Woke Left can’t have their cake and eat it too.
This is because saying—or even believing—something doesn’t make it true. Saying something that matches reality makes it true. But if we can’t just claim things into reality, then Woke Gender Identity Ideology is false.
Worse, it kills itself.
Jon Fleetwood is Managing Editor for American Faith.
