Bruce Jender and TransRachel: Courageous, Calculated, or Crazy?

There's lots of crazy stuff going on, but the recent news can't seem to get enough of the aging male celebrity athlete who has gone to great lengths to playact that he is a, what, 29-year-old woman? (Apparently that's what plastic surgery, designers, and photoshop can do for you.) There is also some white NAACP state executive who has gone to great lengths to present herself as a black person despite her white ethnicity. (That's what continually fake tanning, hair coloring and perming can do for you.)

At this point it would be no big deal to the world if the white woman co-writing this blog post decided she would rather be a black man. All it would take is foregoing make-up, wearing a flattening sports bra, a hair appointment, a lot of fake tanning, and a trip to the thrift store for some men's clothes and shoes. Actually, we don't know why these things have to be done. Apparently all you have to do is tell people who you feel you are. At that moment. Who cares about the trappings? But then again, it seems to be all about appearances, all about the way things look. It certainly isn't about the ways things are, as in biology, facts, genes. Would people buy the notion that Bruce Jenner is "really" a female instead of a man if he didn't go all out to make himself look somewhat like a female? Would people even be seriously asking Rachel Dolezal about her proclaimed "transracial" ethnicity if she didn't have a fake tan and a fake darkish curly afro? You see it's all a trick, slight of hand, an illusion.

It's an illusion, but still, if  this white woman were a public figure, when she presented her new male black self to the world, she would be called brave, courageous. Really? Why? Does mocking God and reality deserve to be lauded as courageous?And if it is courage, so what? Courage is not good or right or virtuous in and of itself. It takes courage to get a tattoo or shoplift or every other silly, selfish, wrong thing. The right kind of courage seems to depend on selfless motives. So why are we applauding a man who makes a public spectacle of himself  pretending he's a woman? Wouldn't it be more courageous to face one's demons privately and work these things out in unselfish ways? When we applaud these people we are teaching kids that what they are doing is good. Is anybody pointing out the fact that transsexuals are 20 times more likely to commit suicide than nontranssexuals?  Johns Hopkins quit doing "sex-change" surgeries because it turned out it didn't help the people to mutilate their healthy genitalia; it only made them more miserable. You see, the problem is deep inside their heads and hearts. It has nothing to do with their gender or their physiognomy or their genitals. It has nothing to do with appearances.

It takes courage to lie. It takes courage to fake around. It takes courage to shock people. But if you are purposely getting something selfish out of it, you are a calculating liar. Maybe people do such things toward some personal advantage. Hasbeen Bruce Jender is certainly in the world spotlight once again, and at age 65 is perhaps more famous than he ever was. He even has his own TV show now. You can bet TransRachel is being offered a reality show, too. Aside from the unhealthy, unnatural obsessions these people seem to have with gender and race to the point that they go to great lengths to act out the opposite of what they really are in their daily personal grooming and appearance, perhaps we should follow the fame and money. Those things are highly addictive for many people. They'll do anything for one or the other or both. Anything. We'd be more inclined to believe in Jenner's sincerity if he had kept all of this embarrassing stuff that has to be hurtful to his family private and wasn't gaining anything by it publicly or financially. He most certainly could have gone that route. So could Rachel. And here's a thought. Isn't a man pretending to be an attractive female the same thing as being transvestite homosexual? Isn't he trying to attract men? Maybe some men use transvestite-ism as an excuse to be homosexual. Maybe it's more acceptable to them that way; after all, a man coupled with a man-costumed-as-a-woman gives the appearance, at least somewhat, of a male with a female. That's what gayness is, you know. A phony contrivance. A false copy of the real thing. An act, a show, a pathetic counterfeit. Everyday is Halloween for these people, at least in public.

By the way, I think women should be outraged at Jenner, and blacks should be outraged at the phony black lady. Jenner never menstruated or gave birth. Rachel was raised white. These fakes are benefiting without paying their dues.

Back to conniving. The NAACP lady's shenanigans were and continue to be calculated. She put on a costume, lied on applications, and gained a college scholarship. Cha-ching. And then, her life based on lies,  landed a big fancy job. Cha-cha-ching. It appears that the powers that be don't care. Apparently, contrary to Martin Luther King's famous words, it's not your character that matters at all---go ahead and lie and cheat---it only matters if we like what you do. The ends justifies the means.

And let's not forget the attention-getting. Yes, being gay and being black can can get you gobs of attention these days. Is anybody getting this? These days, who would want to be a man, or white, or a white man? Or Christian or heterosexual, for that matter? These identities are out of style and have been for quite some time, especially in academia, which seeps readily into the culture. Yes, straight white Christian men ought to be ashamed for all sorts of things. It's no wonder people like Bruce Jender and TransRachel, crazy or not, who have questionable motivation and the means, are "opting out" of things like chastity and whiteness and truth and manhood in one way or another---and then flaunting it.  

Are the above mentioned people crazy, as in mentally ill? Not too crazy, no. There appears to be quite a bit of method in their madness.Machiavellian-like, they have obviously calculated their sensational acts toward great personal advantage. And you have to be somewhat sane to go to all that trouble. But courageous, calculated, or crazy to any extent, these bizarre behaviors make for very bad role models for vulnerable youth having to grow up in a world that actually could drive you mentally ill. And what's worse is how normal, decent people are reacting: either with applause or with a complacent shrug. Now that is crazy.