Fates Worse Than Death

How It Is Such A Gift To Tell The Truth

File:St. Regina, Virgin and Martyr Met DP891106.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

A bit of a note—I wrote this without knowing there is a rousing debate going on about whether it is a good thing to employ certain levels of subterfuge if you happen to be Matt Walsh trying to blow apart (that’s just a little cellphone joke) the DEI grift. I am sure I will have some thoughts about that in the forthcoming, but for today, I’m talking about truth in the sense that, when being lectured about the necessity of telling a lie, it’s always better to decide not to. I came by this thought because Matt sent me a Zoom recording floating around Twitter of a ghastly struggle session going on between a man dressed as a woman and an actual woman. Click the pic to follow the link:

Several moments in this brief exchange fascinate me. At first the person on the right seems as though he will be respectful, but then the whole thing takes a dark turn and he becomes aggressive. The person on the left only speaks three or four times, once to ask for time to think, and twice to say that it should be possible to disagree and still respect each other. I have transcribed the relevant portions:

Will you state on the record right now that trans women are women?

To which the person on the left responds that she’s never been asked that before. The person on the right reiterates the question and the person on the left says:

No, I wanna have some time to think on that.

To which the person on the right shortly replies:

Ok, well that's me. Have a great day.

Except that he goes on, at length, to explain to her how she is wrong:

Unless you can tell me right now that you believe that I as a trans woman right now right here am a woman then we don't have a lot to work on here. You wanna talk about listening to the community? If you can't start with that basic foundational principle that we are who we say we are in our bones then I don't think we're on the same page for working forward.

In fact, he just cannot stop explaining to her how she’s wrong:

You're not doing the work. The work is the inner work. You're learning the outer work. You're learning what you're allowed to say in public and what you're not so you don't get in the situation again cause you got caught saying what you really thought.

You haven't shown that you've changed. If you can't show that you've changed then how can I work with you? If you don't believe that I am a woman sitting right here right now, how on earth are you saying that you're working with me? What work have you done then?

She asks one final time:

Can we disagree and still respect each other?

And he signs off.

If you, Dear Reader, have a moment to watch it, I would be most interested in your thoughts. One thing that strikes me is that the person on the right, at least through the vagueness of the screen, doesn’t exactly look like a man. But then he begins to speak and the game is given away. His vocal register is very low and his aggressive insistance that she give him the affirmation he requires—that he *is* a woman—has a certain masculine, and, dare I say it, toxic feel. It reminded me a bit of reading about the martyrdom of various young women in the early moments of Christian history. I happened upon the story of Saint Regina of Alesia in France who, quite a long time after Julius Ceasar vanquished Vercingetorix, refused to acquiesce to marry the proconsul who thought she should leave off being Christian as the price of getting to be with him. She was therefore tortured and beheaded. Some men, though certainly not all, think that their superior size, strength, and spiritual degeneration entitle them to the attention and favor of women without having to bother with the niceties of charity, virtue, humility, chastity, and holiness. Sure, whatever man. Many of us would rather die.

At the same time, I feel deeply sorry for the person on the right side of the Zoom screen. It is a very terrible thing to believe a lie, to commit to that lie, and then discover that some people will not aid and abet you as you dwell within the darkness. There is a young person at my gym who is very tall and who is, in point of fact, a young man. But he has obviously been taking some kind of medication that is changing his shape. He saunters around, sure that suddenly he is now a woman, determined to be happy. I think if anyone were to speak to him—ours is not a kind of place where the people laboring away at their fitness routines ever speak to each other, and only very rarely make eye contact—he would say that he is on some epic journey of becoming who he really is. As he moves from machine to machine he is always searching out to be seen. Nay, his expression demands that everyone look at him.

I have taken to praying for him as I go along on my epic journey of forestalling osteoporosis. I am a dumpy, middle-aged person. I have gone through many kinds of changes, none of them medically induced, all of them unsettling. First I was a babe and then a child. Next, I went through puberty which, as everyone knows, is so upsetting. After a while, I was a young woman anxious about being too fat. Then I got married and had babies and had to somehow make room in my very body for other people who were not me. Then I had to give those people up and let them go through the same trials and tribulations that I had endured. Now I am on my way to being a matriarch, a person who doesn’t have very much to lose, whose body has endured much and is always tired. And that’s unsettling and also perfectly fine.

In my middle age, I feel the horrible tragedy of a young man taking hormones that aren’t meant for him, altering the shape of his muscles and his mind. A while ago there was a young woman doing the same thing, trying to erase those characteristics that made her essentially feminine, nay even beautiful. Because I am a stranger and exactly the age that is so embarrassing, I forbare to say anything to that young person, and this new one. All I can do is pray as I stress my own flesh for its own good.

Prayer, and of course to always speak the truth. For the person on the left of that Zoom screen did the most loving thing possible. She leaned forward. She did not react. She respectfully listened. And when an answer was required, she spoke kindly. She did not scream out that she was being mansplained, though certainly that was the case. She did not point out that her interlocutor was disrespectful to her. But most crucially, she did not give in. She did not lie to the man and say he was a woman.

What a gift for him! For he will go on day by day being so angry. And it may be that God will have mercy and that someone else will come along and tell him that there is a way out of the anger, the dysphoria, the shame. That there is a better country, a perfect place where everything works the way it should and everyone feels comfortable. It’s just that to get there, you have to accept the Person who made him for himself. And that is a high cost, of course, but ultimately a sweet one. For he cares for him—and you, body and soul. He cares how uncomfortable and troubled and anxious you are. He cares about how your clothes fit and what you eat and how much sleep you get. But most of all, he cares that you know him as he knows you.

And that, when you get right down to it, is what the person on the right of the Zoom screen is demanding from the person on the left. He wants to be known, only he doesn’t even know himself. How could he? For he doesn’t know his Maker.

So anyway, if you have a tiny second, pray for someone—anyone—and, when the opportunity comes to tell the truth, tell it, and when someone is in great need, mention to them that if they call upon the name of the Lord Jesus, they can be saved. Also, if you’re up for it, have a nice day!