The moral aporias of contemporary progressive politics are becoming more obvious on a regular basis. This week, the U.K.’s Attitude magazine named transgender TikToker Dylan Mulvaney its “Woman of the Year” and featured him on its cover. As is increasingly the case with such awards, the choice of the recipient has little to do with merit or service to the wider community and everything to do with “sticking it to the Man.” Or, in this case, sticking it to the Woman. The award and the cover speak eloquently about the ideology of transgenderism. To give it to a man is to erase real women everywhere, to deny any significance to their bodies or distinctive bodily experiences, and also to deny the historical struggle of women for basic social recognition.
Of course, a radical feminism predicated on overcoming the physiological differences between men and women was always going to focus on reproduction, the most stubborn of the differences. And once society comes to see reproduction as a bug and not a feature of womanhood, the possibility of offering a stable answer to the question “What is a woman?” starts to disappear in a fog of culturally subjective behaviors. And so now radical feminism has found itself in a dilemma of its own making: downgrade reproduction to liberate women and you end up erasing women altogether. Or at least you end up allowing men to usurp your history and, as you complain men always do, use their privileged position to maintain their power.
Yet the patronizing and destructive nature of transgender ideology with regard to women does not end with their erasure. The Attitude magazine cover is fascinating. Mulvaney’s look is an off-the-shoulder number, and the styling is reminiscent of the Vanity Fair cover that displayed the transformation of Bruce Jenner into Caitlyn, airbrushed and scantily clad, looking seductively into the camera. Both images perpetuate a male stereotype of what a woman should be.
Carl Trueman | “Dylan Mulvaney And The Real Clash Of Civilizations” | October 19th, 2023
RESOURCES
- Subscribe To The Heidelblog!
- The Heidelblog Resource Page
- Heidelmedia Resources
- The Ecumenical Creeds
- The Reformed Confessions
- The Heidelberg Catechism
- Recovering the Reformed Confession (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2008)
- Why I Am A Christian
- What Must A Christian Believe?
- Heidelblog Contributors
- Carl Trueman On Preaching On Sexual Ethics
- Office Hours: Carl Trueman Explains Why The World Seems So Upside Down
- Support Heidelmedia: use the donate button or send a check to
Heidelberg Reformation Association
1637 E. Valley Parkway #391
Escondido CA 92027
USA
The HRA is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.
Heidelblog
The Heidelblog has been in publication since 2007. It is devoted to recovering the Reformed confession and to helping others discover Reformed theology, piety, and practice.
More by Heidelblog ›
Ignorance, Indifference, and Complacency are the attendants of misogyny.
Seeing the depraved darkness of misogyny is a brutal attack on my heart, mind, and conscience but an essential trial in order to wake me up to the environment of the fallen world.
“It has helped to realize a world of moral incoherence and dubious stability. The clash of civilizations is a clash of anthropologies, virtual versus real. The last weeks have exposed that rather obviously and indicate that the big question of our day is not “What is a woman?” but rather “What, if anything, is a human being?” “
The stability is knowing that, in this hideous darkness, Christ is ruling the Inaugurated Kingdom at God’s right hand in such a way as to allow His enemies to continue in rebellion until He comes a 2nd time to consummate the Kingdom of God. (Psalms 2 & 110).
My question is: How do we live by Grace in ‘our true identity’ in the substance of Christ in this last hour until He comes to consummate the Kingdom of God?