“Only
the knower knows”
This
piece of pseudo philosophy is complete rubbish. But it is sneaking
into every-day thought and it is being used to underpin the terribly
destructive “gender fluidity” propaganda out kids are being
relentlessly bombarded with.
One
of my daughters is doing a course in librarianship. In a recent essay
assignment, the course notes said “In archiving we cannot say we
are storing knowledge because only the knower knows ...” So this
perverse ideology is really infiltrating education.
Kids
– from tender ages like 6 years old are being taught that no one
can tell them what gender they are because – you guessed it - “only
the knower knows” - so they alone know what gender they are.
Then
the door is not just left open but kicked down by “educational”
material persuading them that if they like activities normally
associated with another gender (not just two genders remember!) then
that's what they should “identify” as. So some boys are
encouraged to dress as girls at school and use the girls change rooms
(backed up by government mandate to the schools), girls who like
skateboarding ate persuaded to have their breasts surgically removed
and take testosterone and so forth – all behind the parents backs.
And in some countries if parents find out and object they can be
charged with “child abuse” and have the children removed to state
care. Doctors who dare to advise kids against surgical and or drug
sex change are ipso facto guilty of professional misconduct.
If
you have not come across this hideous program it likely sounds
unbelievable. If so watch one or both of these videoettes:
OK
so this “gender fluidity” teaching is really bad. It is also
built on a web of lies. One of these, as I said is that “only the
knower can know” meaning in this case that only the child in
question can “know” what their gender is.
So
let's talk about what it is to “know” something.
An
otherwise obscure professor named Edmund Gettier was told he had
better publish something. So he wrote a short paper on knowledge that
set philosophers on their ears.
He
said – illustrated with an amusing story – that to “know”
something required:
a)
to believe the proposition was true
b)
to have a sound reason to believe it was true
c)
for it to be true.
For
a huge number of propositions – just for a start: fire burns, ice
is cold, eating a lemon makes ones mouth pucker … - things that
most of us learn by experiment as children we can say are common
knowledge. The child who has just touched a hot stove cannot claim
that only they know fire burns – lots of us know that!
I
don't think one has to go any farther than that to say “Myth
Busted!” … “Only the knower can know” is false
Now
to gender. Last post I said gender was about an individual's putative
role in reproduction. Reproduction requires a sperm and an egg. If
you have the sexual apparatus that normally produces eggs then you
are a female. If you have the sexual apparatus that normally provides
the sperm to fertilise the egg, then you are a male. Thee are no
other options.
So
if activists claim that a child “knows” they are a boy in a girls
body or a girl in a boys body they are wrong on every level.
a)
can the child believe this is true? Well I dare say
sufficient brainwashing can make someone believe almost anything! But
without brainwashing, can they? We were discussing this over dinner
when my younger daughter put this argument: “A girl cannot say
she feels she is a boy for the simple reason she cannot know what it
feels like to be a boy because she isn't one! As a girl whatever
she feels is something a girl can feel!”
For
those who remember their maths; attributes (from people's
heights to anything else) in populations show a spread around a mean
generally like a “bell curve”.
If
you take say, “all people age X” the curve is generally
bi-modal. That is
to say there are actually two means – one for males and one for
females.
If
you take adult heigh for instance, the mean height of men is taller
than that of women, but for each sex there is a spread – some
shorter and some taller than the mean. So whilst the mean height of
men is greater than that of women, there are some women who are
taller than some men. We all know that – we've seen it!
So
to with masculine and feminine traits of every sort – men and women
are different BUT some women score higher on a
masculine trait than some men and some men score higher on a feminine
trait that some women. That's just how life (and statistics) is. BUT
to say in either case the person is a man in a woman's body or a
woman in a man's body is is just plain wrong and also cruel
and wicked.
b)
Can a child have a sound reason to believe this? Well they are
told it by teachers they trust and teaching material provided by the
government education department which they might believe is to be
trusted, and every attempt is made to stop them discussing it with
their parents who would try to tell them the truth – so you might
say that in their minds they have reason to believe they are the
wrong gender.
But
in fact this fails Gettier's test of being a good reason: They have a
false belief that the government and their teachers will tell them
the truth in this area.
c)
Is it true? We are back to an absolute standard of truth. As I
write this a foot-bridge collapse in Florida is in the news. The
engineers doubtless believed it was strong enough to support itself,
but in reality just five days after being put up it collapsed onto a
busy highway crushing a number of cars and their occupants. There are
absolute standards of truth: it was not true that the
bridge was strong enough! (Gettier would say the engineers had a
sincere false belief that it was)
As
I have outlined above: Gender fluidity is not true: the boys are real
boys and the girls are real girls
Yes
there are genetic and birth defects which in olden days were
surgically corrected if possible – now activists have banned this
and convinced these unfortunates to live out their lives with
deformed genitalia as “intersex” - another terribly cruel trick.
There is also a real psychiatric condition “gender dysphoria”.
Kids suffering from it have about four times the suicide rate of
other kids – which is terrible. However U.S. statistics show that
this sad suicide rate actually goes up for kids with it
who are given chemical and/or surgical “sex change” therapy!
To
conclude: No, it is definitely not true that “only the child
can know their gender” anyone – by looking at their
genitalia, or if doubtful checking their DNA can know definitely and
definitively what gender a child is, and he or she should be brought
up as that gender and to be confidant they are that gender even if
say a girl is what used to be called a “Tomboy” - like Calamity
Jane!
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