Magicians Trapped Inside Monkeys

by John Zmirak - July 22, 2009

Reprinted with permission.

The University of Chicago has just announced that its students are not, in fact, humans, but magicians trapped inside of monkeys. The Windy City dons are not alone in believing this about the bright young things who crowd its halls at the estimated cost of $52,298 per year. Many other equally prestigious and pricey schools adopt the same core principle and enshrine it in their policies.

Now, they don't say this in so many words. But that's what U. Chicago meant when it announced that men and women as young as 17 could share the same dorm rooms. The Chicago Sun-Times reported on July 6 that the school is making its dorms bisexual, in order to accommodate "transgender" students who "identify with the opposite sex."

One dogma of academic feminism states that "gender" is not determined by the structure of particular organs that reproduce the species. Gender is a "social construction" so complicated that its study requires thousands of scholars grinding out jargon-laden tomes at schools across the country, while graduate students teach their classes. Gender is the product of patriarchal religious and economic structures that force women to nurture their infants instead of becoming hockey players and creates the illusion that heterosexuality is somehow the biological norm of human behavior. (They call this ugly prejudice "heteronormativity.")

"Gender" is not a fact of life but an ideological figment from which an individual may dissent. Your body may have popped out equipped with testicles and a penis. Does that mean you're male? Let's question that patriarchal assumption. How do you feel about your equipment? Do you like the touch of silk against your skin and crave a warm cup of tea, a Persian cat, and a nice Jane Austen novel? Then you might be a woman trapped inside the body of a man. Doctors will offer you hormones, counseling, and surgery to carve up your body to match your mind. The magician makes the decisions, then takes his monkey suit to the tailor for alterations.

Until recently, psychologists treated such "gender confusion" as an illness and helped patients mold their cognitions to match the realities dangling from their abdomens. But now we know better and realize that man is neither social nor an animal. He is a spirit that transcends biology and society – a kind of wizard, whose mere flesh modern, magical medicine can mold to suit his preferences. As Michael Jackson proved, only in America can a poor but talented young black man grow up to become a rich white woman.

Those who undergo full-bore "gender reassignment" can suffer severe health problems from ripping up their plumbing and taking massive steroids. But at least they followed their dream.

Myself, I want to enroll at U. Chicago and announce that I'm a lion. I'll insist on living naked in a habitat on campus and eating ten pounds of raw antelope flesh a day. Isn't species just another social construct?

Some say it might be distracting to have two sexes in a dorm room or sharing bathrooms (as we did and they still do at Yale). The innovators really can't answer, because they find sex too confusing. By dumping horny teens in the same boudoirs, they assert that sex is irrelevant and students are disembodied intellects. There are no intrinsic distinctions between the sexes – so varying test scores in science must stem from sexism.

But these experts can't make up their minds. At other times, they act as if sex infuses everything, so we need elaborate "gender studies" programs and punitive codes to control activities like flirting. Oops, I meant to say "sexual harassment," defined as "unwelcome" romantic overtures. Some men complain that it's hard to know if such overtures are welcome before you make them – by which point it's too late, and you may already be in trouble with the dean. You might have run into that same dean at your college's latest sex festival – like the one held every year by Oberlin College, which includes elaborate lessons on "safe S&M." Some schools think it best you relieve your "tensions" by yourself, with the help of the pornography it distributes. Wesleyan offers quite a substantial selection, including such titles as Dress Up for Daddy and Goat Boy and the Potato Chip Ritual.

What Wesleyan does not endorse, though, is the use of "sexist" pronouns. In a university-wide memo the student-run Wesleyan Trans/Gender Group demanded that students replace he/she/him/her with

ze (subjective) and hir (objective and possessive). For example, "I was talking to my friend Kris earlier. Ze told me that hir paper was due tomorrow, and it was stressing hir out." Some students prefer to be referred to with gender neutral pronouns, and many students prefer to use gender neutral pronouns in papers instead of the universal he.

Who says that American colleges aren't focused on teaching the basics?

Those of you seeking schools that accept a more traditional vision of man – minus the magical monkeys – should check out the guide I edit, which covers traditionally minded and faithfully Catholic colleges, alongside the usual suspects. Share the book with your college-age son or daughter. Ze will thank you for giving hir all the facts.

John Zmirak is author, most recently, of the graphic novel The Grand Inquisitor and is Writer-in-Residence at Thomas More College in New Hampshire. He writes weekly for InsideCatholic.com.