You're a clump of cells after you're born, too
Also, "feminism is proto gender dysphoria"
I recently listened to a podcast by Timothy Gordon, a traditionalist Roman Catholic. I would not endorse everything he says, but he has a philosophical bent of mind, and I appreciate that. In the linked podcast, he criticizes Matt Walsh’s new film “What is a Woman?”, not as a bad film per se, but just as a film that fails to address the problem in its fundamental form. He says, basically, that the film settles on “a woman is a human who has these reproductive organs which are used this way in procreation”. And that much is true, and the biological differences are maybe the most obvious thing you could mention. But a woman is also, and perhaps more importantly, defined by “what is the intended function and purpose of a woman?”, in the church and in the home and in society, to which the reproductive biology and endocrine biology and so on is intimately connected because God made us whole creatures. But a woman is not only her biology.
The modern transgender movement, he says, is really just the third phase of a problem dating back at least 150 years. In its first phase, the problem was feminism, which gave us concepts like “gender roles”. It isn’t that men and women have their proper stations in life, it’s just “gender roles”, with the implication that these are rather arbitrary and probably oppressive cultural conventions to be overcome by the enlightened. And so if you’re a woman who wants to live like a man1, or a man who wants to live like a woman, that’s great. (This is the “feminism is proto gender dysphoria” part.) Gordon attended his Roman Catholic high school twenty years ago or whatever, and none of the girls at that time were literally saying “I’m a boy and I’m going to drug myself and start cutting off parts because I’m really a boy”, but they did talk about “gender roles” and bought into feminist assumptions, as many Christians today have.
Phase two of the problem was homosexuality, where feminist thinking now becomes explicitly sexualized, and a man can behave like a woman in the bedroom. And then phase three is transgenderism where we begin literally drugging girls to make them look like boys and so on.
But the problem began with feminism, the problem began with denying functional and teleological differences intended by God and expressed in nature. And, Gordon would say, that is where our primary objection to transgenderism needs to be, not just in the obvious biology. If we just talk biology, we’re really just progressives driving the speed limit, complaining about the latest Leftist innovation while it is still new, while meanwhile we’ve basically stopped questioning the assumptions behind the innovation (feminism).
A woman is her biology, but she isn’t only that biology.
You're a clump of cells after you're born, too
Abortion brings us a parallel consideration, when the unborn child is dismissed as “just a clump of cells” or some equivalent. Yes, the unborn child is a clump of cells, is that biological and chemical mass… and so are you. But neither the child nor you are only that. Edward Hamilton inspired the title here, so I will give him credit now and then explain some more.
The genesis of these conversations was a lecture at the University of Michigan medical school. Vinay Prasad has a brief writeup on it. The speaker was UofM professor Kristin Collier, and she and I have had a few online interactions. In my opinion she’s pretty moderate politically, but she is a Roman Catholic and she is publicly against abortion… and so that subset of students always on the lookout for heretics these days protested her selection as speaker, and then walked out of the event when she began her speech. From Vinay’s piece:
That didn’t stop hundreds of students and staff from signing a petition demanding Dr. Collier be replaced with another speaker. “While we support the rights of freedom of speech and religion, an anti-choice speaker as a representative of the University of Michigan undermines the University’s position on abortion and supports the non-universal, theology-rooted platform to restrict abortion access, an essential part of medical care,” they wrote. “We demand that UM stands in solidarity with us and selects a speaker whose values align with institutional policies, students, and the broader medical community.”
Note the complaint that the desire to restrict abortion access is a “theology-rooted platform”. The walkout was captured on video and posted to Twitter and became super popular among the online Left, probably because it combined “chance to proclaim how much I love abortion” and “chance to maybe destroy one of our enemies”, and the emotional high produced by that combination is just too good to pass up.
By the numbers, that would have to be one of the most popular tweets I have ever seen - 16 million views for the video, 800,000 likes. Now, this is a side comment about “how the propaganda works now”, but it should be said that it is absolutely possible that a significant fraction of that 800,000 likes is from bot accounts designed to give the impression the tweet is more popular than it really is. I was dealing with one known bot account last week that had 18,000 followers, so there are plenty of robot-likes to be had on social media. However, regardless of exactly how many of those views and likes are from real people, I think we can say with confidence that the online Left love love loves abortion.
The pro-abortion mind
Collier’s talk, ironically, was in part about the importance of doctors seeing their patients as more than just a machine. That’s a valuable message for the medical profession to hear in our day of biological reductionism. And inasmuch as philosophical support for abortion (such as it is) is built around the idea that we are all just machines, just biology to be manipulated… that is some talk for the pro-abortionists to walk out on.
On Twitter, I jumped into the video thread relatively early (in part because I wanted to at least a little bit defend an acquaintance) and I probably received 300+ replies. (Trust me, I skimmed through them all again before writing this post!) Many of them were quite vile and/or stupid, many of them people who probably demanded vaccine mandates yesterday and are now suddenly really big fans of the idea that no one gets to tell a woman what healthcare decisions she makes… but I’m not going to upset you by sharing anything just because it is vile. But some of the replies do offer a look into the pro-abortion mindset. I have it under three headings below… all three are, perhaps, an aspect of the problem of biological reductionism, but I’ll look at it under three headings.
Keep religion out of our medical schools
I had mentioned that the petition complained about Collier’s “theology-rooted platform”. I saw that type of complaint in the replies over and over again, and below are a few to make the point. Note especially the first, “your religion does not belong in a medical school”.
One way to understand this is that what you are seeing here is the myth of progressive neutrality, or secular neutrality. You are anti-abortion because of your Christian beliefs, that’s “religion”, that’s bad, we don’t allow that here. We are past all of that, we don’t even have “beliefs”, or if we do we’re just following the science. But we certainly don’t have any religion ourselves. (Indeed, the original petition complained about Collier’s “non-universal, theology-rooted platform”… as if the pro-abortion position is universal, or something?)
Now in a sense I don’t fault these people, because many of them are just repeating the narrative they imbibed in the trash education they received. That narrative goes something like “woe, for long years humanity labored under the dark oppression of religion, but in the last few hundred years we have begun to throw off those shackles for the Light of Science”. (You need not mention that the Light of Science is presently convincing young girls that they are really boys and sterilizing them, or that the scientific nations of the 20th century committed some of the worst human atrocities ever seen. Science is great. Science divorced from religion, however, ain’t pretty.)
And, in another sense, bless ‘em, they are correct. Yes, my anti-abortion beliefs are rooted in religion… just like my belief that murder is wrong is rooted in religion. My whole anthropology is rooted in religion (and so is yours).
Two related things may be said here. One, we can “keep religion out of the medical schools” exactly as well as we can “don’t legislate morality”, which is to say that both requests would largely destroy the referenced institutions if actually implemented. It is religion that tells us why our fellow man is valuable and to be respected even when he can do nothing for us. And it is religion that gives us ultimate and fundamental guidance on purpose and function, which is necessary when much of medicine is about restoring something to its proper function.
And two, the people who want to “remove religion from our medical schools” are some of the most dogmatic people around. (Thank you G.K. Chesterton - there are two kinds of humans, those who have a dogma and know it, and those who have a dogma and do not know it, and the latter are more dogmatic.) Today they will walk out on a speaker because she has the “wrong” anthropology. Tomorrow they would quite happily suspend the license of any doctor who has the “wrong” anthropology. They are more dogmatic about their faith than the Christians are, and eager to proselytize.2
Biological reductionism and a denial of purpose
More briefly… this post is largely about the importance of thinking about purpose, and indeed it is difficult to think about purpose without an explicitly religious framework, which is one of the reasons people are so confused today. To my surprise, the one thing I said that seemed to get people the most riled up… I’m reading all this stuff about “forced birth”, a new favorite phrase, that makes it sound like pregnancy is a mysterious thing that just happens to people. So I made the rather common reply, “why does responsibility begin after sex, and not before”? Pregnancy is not a mystery, it is the natural and expected result of sex. I got replies like this one.
And how about, and think this one through now, comparing pregnancy as a result of sex to breaking your leg as a result of skydiving. I probably don’t need to parse this analogy for this audience.
This is a little weird because even, and perhaps especially, if you’re a materialist evolutionist, sex still has a pretty clear purpose, yes? But why not? The body is just a machine. We have tools we use to control that machine. If the first tool fails and the machine malfunctions, you have a right to the second tool. The unborn child is just another little machine inside the first machine. (And yes, you could justify any atrocity with that understanding of man.)
So when does abortion become wrong, then?
And finally, some other folks tried to get some clarity on what exactly the limits are, then. OK, so you say it’s OK to terminate a child one month after conception. What about three months? What about six months? What about twelve months? What about five years? When is the magical moment at which the killing becomes wrong, and why then? Some appeared willing to defend abortion until birth.
Speaking of totally arbitrary cultural conventions, the pro-abortion movement has no good answer for when the killing becomes wrong that is not, on their part, a totally arbitrary marker they just made up. My anthropology came from Christianity, their anthropology came from… decaying Christian vibes and their feelings and CNN and a trash education.
Yes, humans are a clump of cells, but not only a clump of cells.
Some readers may desire elaboration. At least for men and women who are part of a household, in Gordon’s opinion the man’s function includes things like being the spiritual leader, making moral and financial decisions, protecting, earning bread probably by working outside of the home, and generally being more dominant, leading, active, and expressive. The woman by contrast is the man’s field general inside the home, executing his orders, working inside the home, and generally nurturing, submitting, and being receptive.
Excellent essay. Science and truth are on our side and we must never shy away from expressing our pro-life convictions. Christopher Hitchens and the late, great civil libertarian Nat Hentoff were pro-life atheists who used science to form their beliefs.
As for religion forming the basis for so much of our culture, the historian Tom Holland wrote an outstanding book, "Dominion," exploring this subject. An atheist, Holland now finds himself attending church services weekly, according to an interview I read last year. He is stepping on the same path CS Lewis and Malcolm Muggeridge took before him.
Dostoevsky wrote that "without God, all is permissible." He is absolutely correct and I am afraid that we will be soon living through the ramifications as our society collapses (by design, imo) in front of our eyes.
I am not on Twitter. Sometimes I take a peek at what certain people have tweeted, and I am quite happy that I always have to do two extra clicks (one to agree to log in, one to get rid of the log-in window). It is like a reminder that this is not good for me.