Friends, my latest article, well, must be read to be believed. I wrote it at the intersection of Californian lunacy, illegal immigration, and women's and transgender rights. Intrigued? So was I! Enjoy...
Governor Moonbeam: Slayer of Genders
By now the
American people are well-accustomed to the unmitigated kookiness that
emanates from the Golden State, a.k.a. California. Governor Jerry
Brown, affectionately known as “Moonbeam,” is naturally entitled
to be recognized as Bedlamite-in-Chief, and he seldom disappoints in
terms of the absurdity of his remarks, which is to say nothing of his
policies (the less said about these, the better).
Recently,
Governor Brown uncharacteristically agreed to President Trump's
request that troops of the California National Guard be deployed to
assist in enhancing security along our country's border with Mexico.
He was careful to observe that these National Guardsmen would not be
used to enforce immigration laws, however – they would instead
focus on other criminal activity on or near the border, including
drug smuggling and human trafficking. "This will not be a
mission to build a new wall," Brown declared. "It will not
be a mission to round up women and children or detain people escaping
violence and seeking a better life."
The proviso “It will not be a
mission to round up women and children” passed without any great
furor in the press, but it is precisely this throwaway remark that I
wish to analyze, because it cuts to the quick of casual
Democratic/leftist bias on matters of sex/gender, and as such it
merits our full attention.
The only possible interpretation of
Governor Brown's remark is that any immigration policy that leads to
the “rounding up,” i.e. detention, of “women and children” is
wrong, or at least highly suspect. Consider that attitude and its
implications. If children are not to be “rounded up” at the
border, what this means is that all children worldwide have what
amounts to an entitlement to U.S. residency. Already, children are
entitled to preferential treatment upon their apprehension by
immigration authorities, based on the protections they receive under
U.S. law, but no law currently on the books insists that it is out of
bounds to detain children, or to deport them. Governor Brown is
making such a claim, albeit not on legal but presumably on moral
grounds. Undoubtedly, this will be an encouragement to children who
may be considering hopping the border. After all, Jerry Brown is
saying that, not only are they presumptively entitled to residency,
but even to detain them, or to impede their passage into the United
States, is unacceptable. Extraordinary.
Governor Moonbeam goes further,
however, and opines that “women and children” (emphasis
added) should not be “round[ed] up”. Now, in doing so, it must be
noted that Brown is using a time-tested formula, “women and
children,” which presents these two categories together, based on
the historical assumption that they are vulnerable and thus deserving
of greater protection than that offered to men. “Women and children
first!” was one of the last announcements that many passengers on
the ill-fated Titanic heard.
Its officers and crew were following the then standard practice of
offering places on lifeboats first to women and children, and only
later (if some places remained) to men. This was an act of chivalry,
as well as an observance of the “Cult of Domesticity,” which
seemed entirely appropriate at the time, but it cannot be denied that
the ideology that undergirded it was patriarchal. Why should women
receive places in lifeboats before men? Because women were presumed
to be the “weaker sex,” and it was men's duty to protect them. In
our allegedly more enlightened age, such an attitude would ordinarily
be considered patronizing at best, and sexist at worst, but Jerry
Brown invokes it without batting an eyelash. Presumably, he does so
because he knows that, as a liberal Democrat, he can be as racist or
as sexist as he likes, without meaningful consequence to his
reputation. In any case, Brown is certainly not the first Democrat to
dust off this patriarchal trope and deploy it for leftist purposes,
but his invocation of the old attitude is one of the more arresting
modern examples, simply because of its sweeping policy implications.
For,
lest we forget, liberals no longer consider gender a fixed category,
as certainly the officers and crew of the Titanic
did. One's “gender identity” in this day and age, according to
the left, is purely a matter of personal preference. To put it
another way, Governor Brown presumably meant
to say that the California National Guard would not “round up
[people who identify as women] and children”. We will give him the
benefit of the doubt and assume he was saving time by referring only
to “women,” but, as a believer in transgender rights, it is
inconceivable that he meant to exclude those who are transitioning,
or have transitioned, or may someday transition, to femininity.
Consider, then,
the full implications of Governor Brown's reimagining of immigration
law and policy. The deportation of “[people who identify as women]
and children” is unimaginable; even to detain them is abhorrent.
Therefore, what is to stop anyone, anywhere on the globe, from
relocating himself/herself/?self to the border and surrendering to
the Border Patrol? If this imaginary “immigrant” had the
misfortune to be born a man, this presents little difficulty, because
he could simply redefine himself as a woman. Could this be seen as
opportunistic? Surely, but the left has made its position clear: no
legal or social standard can be imposed that limits a person's
ability to define, or redefine, their own gender identity.
Presumably, therefore, our imaginary male/female immigrant could, if
he/she wished, reacquire his masculinity after receiving permanent
residency. Why not? Not that we would count this as likely, however.
After all, since Jerry Brown and people like him have already decided
that men ought to possess inferior rights, who in his/her right mind
would willingly embrace manhood, when there are so many more
attractive categorizations, including femininity, at hand?
In
such a way, Governor Brown may have found the silver bullet that can
produce the abolition of all policies of border enforcement. Indeed,
he may have found the formula for the left to eliminate international
borders and men
simultaneously! Brilliant! The world will never be the same.
