Take a walk over to our campus library and you can see why I think the inmates are running this asylum, which is otherwise known as UNC-Wilmington. There is a display showing a little girl being held down as someone prepares to take a razor blade to her genitals. The picture reminds me why I am opposed to genital mutilation. And I’m always opposed to genital mutilation.
The crazy aspect of the display is not the fact that it is graphic and offensive. It is that it is so dishonest. Put simply, the feminists at the UNCW Women’s Resource Center are not really opposed to genital mutilation. The fact that they co-sponsored a film called Trans-Generation shows that they are ambivalent on the issue.
Feminists will say there is a difference between the kind of genital mutilation portrayed on their display and the kind portrayed in Trans-Generation; namely, that the former is coerced and the latter is freely chosen. But that logic is flawed for two reasons.
First, Trans-Generation glorifies genital mutilation among college students, many of whom are under 21. Surely, someone who does not have the maturity to sip a beer does not have the maturity to order someone to surgically alter its genitals. They cannot have developed a full appreciation of the effects of their “decision.”
Second, there can be no valid consent offered by one who is profoundly mentally ill. We would never assert that a man who thought he was a unicorn could “choose” to have his penis attached to his forehead. We would assert that he is mentally ill or run the risk that others would deem us mentally ill. Nor should we ever assert that a man who thought he was a woman could “choose” to have his penis carved into a female sex organ. We should assert that he is mentally ill or run the risk that others think the same of us.
But a group called the Gender Mutiny Collective disagrees. This fringe political group advocates the position that those who crave genital mutilation are not mentally ill. Instead, those who would stand in their way are “trans-phobic.” In other words, they think that opponents of “freely chosen” genital mutilation are themselves suffering from a phobia (read: mental disorder).
The Gender Mutiny Collective has gone to the extreme of asking college administrators to monitor the lectures of college professors whom they suspect to be suffering from “transphobia.” To date, the American Association of University Professors has had no comment on this obvious infringement of academic freedom.
In 2006, my department was asked to sponsor Trans-Generation not financially but emotionally by offering our approval of the film. One of our level-headed faculty members noted that sponsoring a film that endorsed genital mutilation would make us look bad in the community. One feminist’s bigoted and stereotypical reply claimed that the community was comprised of nothing but people with “pot bellies” who drive “pickup trucks.”
In other words, we have now “progressed” to a point in academia where those who advocate “chosen” genital mutilation deem themselves to be morally superior to the people who oppose it. And, remember, those people are not just fat rednecks. They’re also mentally ill.
I wrote this column to state publicly that I do not endorse the film Trans-Generation. I simply will not take advantage of the mentally ill in order to establish my own sense of moral superiority. And I certainly won’t do it in the name of tolerance and diversity.
If any member of the Gender Mutiny Collective is offended by this column I invite you to come and monitor my classroom. I also invite you to kiss my ass.
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