“Woman” undefined and the destruction of words (and sex)

Some weeks ago, as readers undoubtedly know, Supreme Court and Harvard educated nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, though a woman herself, pleaded a lack of expertise when asked to define the word “woman.” Ridicule resonated from the right. Instead of mocking her, however, we should instead praise her for the clarity she brings to the destruction wrought by the Sexual Revolution.

Rather than mere ignorance, her response reveals the very success of the Sexual Revolution, for the purpose of that Revolution was never a new sexuality but no sexuality—not its rebirth but its destruction. That destruction has taken place behind the façade of words hollowed out, words that once meant something but now mean nothing. Judge Jackson has only made that clear, for in the lexicon of the Sexual Revolution the term “woman” has no meaning.

The terms “sex,” “sexual,” and “sexuality” are grounded in their biological relationship to fertility, to the creation of new life. From its beginning the Sexual Revolution separated these terms from their biological roots—not re-defining them, but un-defining them and reducing them to meaningless blather. Once we have destroyed the meaning of our sexuality, corollary terms such as “man,” “woman,” “male” and “female” can only meet similar fates.

And transgenderism is the victory lap of a revolution that has reduced sexuality to meaninglessness. Its assertion that a man can be a woman and woman can be a man is only possible if it means nothing to be either a man or a woman. Transgenderism requires not only the destruction of words but the physical destruction of actual sexuality. Like words destroyed, real procreative bodies must also be deprived of meaning and replaced with a mockery of fertility. The hollowed words of sexuality must be matched with hollowed bodies, and those hollowed bodies must be honored with hollowed pronouns.

This is not the pinnacle of sexuality but its absolute death knell.

However, the Sexual Revolution has destroyed much more than our sexuality. It has destroyed the meaning of “meaning,” which is an attack on truth itself. It requires us to accept that every man can define his own truth or meaning by simply asserting it is so. This is nihilism with a seductive mask. To say every man can define his own meaning is simply a backhanded way of saying there is neither meaning nor truth. If there is no truth there is no anchor on which we can coalesce as people with a common purpose. There is no “unity in diversity.” Without truth there is only the ultimate diversity of each man living in a world of his own creation. C.S. Lewis, in The Great Divorce, called this hell.

The Sexual Revolution, put simply, declared war on our very language. In redefining words to meet its agenda it made us forget that words are important. When they no longer represent truth they lead us toward death. Imagine a world in which “water” is no longer water. Would our gardens grow if we hydrated our plants with a substance we call “water” but is actually its absence, a dryness that withers and kills? Would we tolerate a merchant who sold us water by the gallon only to give us an empty jug with his assertion that it contains water because he said so? Can we accept his condescension that his “water” is metaphysical, subjective, and more real than our water which must hereafter be referred as “physical water” to distinguish it from his more real “water?”

We cannot, of course, because we would die; we cannot play such a game and live. Both the food we grow and the bodies we inhabit will wither with a water that isn’t water. But perhaps the lie is tempered with truth. Maybe our merchant begins with a mix of real water and a bit of his dry “water.” We see the emptiness at the top of the jug but we accept his lies because the jug is lighter and less of a burden to carry. Seemingly, our life is a bit easier. We learn to not notice the slight withering of our plants and that the slight thirst becomes a constant companion. We begin to lose sight of the beauty of a real water that sustains real life. But we still use the word “water” as if it represents something real. We begin to think it will do what water does even though we have let real water slip away. We can no longer discuss the real from the unreal because the word we use for “water” means nothing. In the desert of our making we will cry for “water” and receive the nothing we have asked for.

We cannot make the unreal real simply by kidnapping words and assigning new meanings. We can, however, lose the word’s original truth. In losing that truth we can experience actual death.

The corruption of the word “water” depicted in the example above has its true counterpart in the word “sexual.” Like a “Water Revolution” that insists that dry lakes are overflowing reservoirs, the “Sexual Revolution” insists that intentional sterility can replace fertility and yet, somehow, the “sexual” remains. With transgenderism the water jug is now filled completely with emptiness. We can only see that, however, if we can see where we willfully bought the jug when it was still mostly full. We first accepted contraception as something that was valid only for married couples. We didn’t really see the emptiness at the top of the jug because it was still mostly filled with water. And it was lighter. It seemed to relieve a burden we did not want to live. But, nonetheless, we considered our relationship “sexual” even after we deprived it of its very essence. To see this is to see the straight line that leads from contraception to broken marriages to fewer marriages to same sex marriages and, ultimately, to a “sexuality” that literally destroys the real sexuality a man and woman are born with.

We would be wrong to think the death is metaphorical as the empty “water” jug is. The death is real. We anguish over the killing in Ukraine. We sorrow over the violent and horrific deaths of its innocents. Vladimir Putin, however, could kill every person in the Ukraine—all forty three million—and not approach the violent and horrific killing of over sixty million children torn apart in the womb and discarded as trash in the United State alone. We can see the massacre far away but not on our own doorstep. Beyond the death of the child in the womb is the death of marriage, of families and of the innocence of childhood.

The sins of the fathers are now borne in their children who no longer know the meaning of their sexuality. With real sexuality reduced to “biological” sexuality, our children, with ever increasing numbers, are submitting to the barbaric brutalization of their bodies, both chemically and physically, to remove what is real and replace it with what isn’t. Instead of meaning, we have given them a lie. We then praise them for living the lie and insist all participate in the lie with gendered pronouns that no longer have meaning. And then, after surrounding them with meaninglessness, nothingness, and endless lies, we are surprised that many try to take their own lives. We are so blinded from consuming a “water” that isn’t really water that we think the solution lies in more lies rather than in the truth.

Rather than lead them to what is real and beautiful, we encourage their emptiness. We do this because we have died to what is real and beautiful. We can no longer see the beauty of a sexuality inherently made for life. We can no longer see ourselves wanting a life that is lived for others, even those yet to be born. We can no longer see that chastity is simply sexuality fully and beautifully lived.

And we cannot pass on to our children what we cannot see, do not know, and have not lived.

To regain our sight, to regain our life, we must reclaim the words that lead to truth. We must see there never was a “Sexual Revolution” in which an old sexuality replaces a new one. We must see beyond the sheep’s skin with its false veneer of caring and love, a disguise that led us to buy our water jug half full and then completely empty. In seeing the truth, we will recognize a genocidal war on sexuality whose purpose is its elimination and nothing more.

We are not a society that is over-sexualized but over-eroticized and de-sexualized. We must call out the lies of the Sexual Revolution and challenge the very language it uses. We can only do that if we first see the beauty of our real sexuality, embrace it, and live it fully in our own lives. Only then can we lead the lost from the desert we have created. And we should thank Judge Jackson for unambiguously telling us that there is no water in the jug, but only an aching emptiness.