Carl Trueman writes about a 52-year old transgender man who is now identifying as transaged as well. Not only is Stefonknee Wolscht no longer identifying as a male of the species. He is also claiming to be a 6-year old. This is not a joke. This 52-year old man really claims that he is now a 6-year old little girl. Thus he is both transgender and transaged. The man’s picture looks like a gag from The Onion, but it’s not. It’s for real.
Many transgender advocates have been complaining that this particular transgender person is trivializing the quest for transgender rights. And it is this complaint that Carl Trueman responds to so trenchantly. Trueman writes:
So when it comes to transgender people mewling and puking about how Wolscht is trivializing their cause, let me put this as simply and gently as I can: When you decide that categories of identity are merely psychological and that reality is constituted by language, you consequently have neither the right nor the ability to call a halt to the Promethean process which you have unleashed just because some of the results prove to be distasteful to you and unhelpful to your political cause. Indeed, whining like a bunch of, ahem, six year old girls is not going to help you at this point.
You do not believe me? Then perhaps it is time to call the spirit of Nietzsche’s Madman once more from the grave: You who have so derided any notion of human nature and external authority, do you now have the courage to face the world for whose birth you yourselves were the midwives? You who have “unchained the sun from this earth,” can you now live with the consequences of your own actions—where all things, even chronological age, must surely give way before the will to power? Face the reality you have made, where Mr. Wolscht is the Nietzschean Übermensch—or, to be precise, the Überkleinesmädchen—of the new order.
Trueman’s essay is a must-read, and you can do so here.
4 Comments
ian Shaw
That’s the irony here. Nietzsche was at least honest enough to understand what would happen when you flesh out things to their natural conclusion.
Chris Ryan
I don’t know about other liberals, but I think of gender dysphoria and body dysmorphia as serious mental health issues. This man is mentally ill. How that mental illness gets treated is, as I see it, an issue for him and his doctors. Society’s job is to be as supportive as reasonably possible, as we do with all health issues.
Christiane Smith
Hi CHRIS,
I agree with you that this man presents as someone with mental issues . . . the write-ups on him indicate that he has in the past threatened to commit suicide,
and we know to take people seriously when they say something like that, because we cannot know if they are simply sending a message that they need help, or if they genuinely wish to take their own life. And, if the latter is the case, we don’t get a ‘second chance’ to help them.
Ian Shaw
I would mostly agree Chris. But I don’t see the LGBT community agreeing that transgenderism is a mental disorder. Unfortunately, that’s the culture we’ve created: moral and existential nihilism.