News reports tell us that Wurst prefers that people apply the female pronoun to him when he slips his dress on. Okay. But does that mean we all have to comply with this rather strange demand, no questions asked? Does objective reality – the fact that there are biological differences between men and women, and that the vast majority of humankind decides whether someone is a man or woman by those biological attributes – count for nothing in the face of one person's wish to be known as something he is not? By the same token, can I now request that people refer to me as black even though I'm white? Who are you to say I am not black? I might feel black.The bending of gender speaks to today's speedily spreading cult of relativism. We live in such relativistic times, in an era so hostile to the idea that there are measurable truths or concrete realities, that it seems we can no longer even speak of "men" and "women". There's no such thing, apparently.
This reminds me of the famous torture passage in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, which should be required reading for everyone:
O'Brien held up his left hand, its back toward Winston, with the
thumb hidden and the four fingers extended.
"How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?"
"Four."
"And if the Party says that it is not four but five -- then how many?"
"Four."
The word ended in a gasp of pain.
