Their World, We Just Live In It

The other evening we were watching the NSW Waratahs and the remarkable ball skills of Occupied-West-Bank Folau (still better known as “Israel”).  One suspects the talented and smiling Mr Folau could be a Rose by any other name.  In the politically correct and gender-bent future the social engineers have planned for us, he may need to be.

The real buzzword these days is diversity.  More is always better, which is why veteran SBS newsreader Lee Lin Chin, who was trumped for the fabulous Gold Logie by the even more diverse Waleed Aly, should keep her Lee Lin Chin up.  Now that the Waratahs’ Kurtly Beale has accepted a lucrative overseas contract, any day her phone could ring with the offer of a spot in the side.  Perhaps deep among the forward pack, where the code’s genderist discrimination has for so long denied women their rightful place.

At Harvard, that bellwether of political sensitivity, the administration recently authorised punitive measures against those who belong to single-sex groups, clubs and societies.  (This could make for a little tension at the local mosque, but never mind.)  All fraternities are now sororities, and one gathers that barber shop quartets will need to snag sopranos lest the choristers find themselves sanctioned. Meanwhile, despite all this progress, US college students are grown so scared of micro-aggressions and triggering they are dash to huddle with soft toys and colouring books in campus “safe spaces”, much as their grandparents were triggered to duck and cover in nuclear shelters by the far less serious micro-aggressions of the Cold War. How could the peril of descending megatonnage ever represent a threat equal to being confronted with the posibility that, somewhere on campus, there might be someone who holds a different opinion?

Once upon a time, respecting the fairer sex was a key element of a gentleman’s education.  Now, door-opening, seat-offering and bag-carrying are offensive, as is the term “fairer sex” itself.  So is the assumption that a man might not be a woman and vice versa. A generation after mathematics instructors introduced their pupils to the notion that everything is reducible to binary (so  computers could take over), students are taught that sex is the exception, that human relationships are not binary and, therefore, everything is fluid and beyond solid definition. Once, the second-worst crime at any primary school was for a boy to invade the girls’ toilets; now, by official decree, it is to be encouraged. By the way, the worst crime — to be found in flagrante delicto with a pupil of the other gender — is now probably fine, as long as your school has signed up to the Safe Schools program and neither of you has engaged in bullying (in person or on-line) in order to assume those amorous positions.

Back at home, all parents are suspect, but none more so than Dads — if you have only one, that is. If you have two Dads, no worries, as we are told all gay families are happy and content all the time. Old fashioned Dads aren’t so fortunate to be blessed with presumptive approval or such sympathetic coverage in the press. They are prone to shameful child-rearing errors and might, for example, treat their progeny to gender traditionalist “boy toys” or “girl toys”, no doubt in outmoded pinks or blues, and thereby encourage gender conformity. Is it any wonder Lee Lin Chin is still waiting for her invitation to star in the Waratahs’ second-row?

If only the heteronormative males of today were imbued with the public spirited decency of their forebears, they would follow the example of the Titanic’s XY-chromosome set and slip quietly beneath the waves, never to be seen or heard from again.  Only in this way could affirmative action on behalf of those remaining souls  — not that they have souls, anymore — currently identifying as women be successful.  When women in leadership roles are finally oppressing as many people as men once did, the movement will have at last succeeded!  (Perhaps we are there already?) There is so much for the unreformed male mind to master, simply absenting themselves from this mortal coil once and for all is to be fervently desired.

Could they be expected to grasp that equal opportunity applies only to those defined on any given day as the most oppressed and down-trodden. Oppressed as in arriving by leaky boat after flying to Indonesia on commercial airlines, paying $10,000 apiece for their passage and jettisoning their identity papers, but not broods of moustachioed “children” under 18.

Can traditionist males accept that all wars and ongoing violence in the world are due to the ill-effects of religion — except for one religion which we won’t name, as it has nothing to do with the key issue, which is  gun control, poor community mental health care, alienation of minorities, or the hegemony of rich, white, English-speaking people (read men) who colonised, enslaved, exploited and debased the rich, peaceful, disease-free, and socially-advanced cultures they found around the planet and did so for mere sport.

If Israel Palau does indeed change his name to something more in step with our modern age and prevailing logic, he might just have a chance of proceeding with his sporting career. For the rest of us testicularly cursed specimens there is no hope, no hope whatsoever.