On Friday night, a mentally ill crossdresser named Bruce Jenner was interviewed for two hours during prime time about his plan to gruesomely mutilate his genitals in a macabre pseduo-medical ritual often erronsously described as a "sex change." He detailed his decision to Diane Sawyer, calmly declaring: "For all intents and purposes, I am a woman."

He concluded that the next best course of action is to castrate himself and live the rest of his life pretending to be a girl. He's already undergone extensive cosmetic surgery, including shaving down his trachea (which is a thing that doctors will actually do, apparently) in pursuit of some perverse, bastardized notion of synthetic femininity.

In response, our depraved and insane country has hailed him as something approaching a god, with millions of people flooding social media to heap unrestrained praise and adulation.

Yes, in the unhinged mind of popular culture, a man puts on a pantsuit and suddenly he's a brave, strong, courageous, amazing, historic, legendary, superhero warrior savior. He went from a D-list reality TV celebrity to Jesus Christ, and all because he said he wants to be a she.

This is demented. The whole thing. All of it.

It's worth noting, too, that it doesn't generally require "courage" or "bravery" or "strength" to do something that is sure to result in television deals and roaring applause from a sea of adoring fans. Usually, courage is not defined as "the willingness to endure immense popularity, esteem, fame, and profit."

I'm not saying this was all a marketing ploy, but his bank account and reputation are certainly reaping the rewards.

So, heroic? Hardly. Amazing? This old man with cerebral palsy using a typewriter to paint the Mona Lisa is amazing, but Bruce Jenner? Sorry, I don't see it.

I think the better word would be horrifying. And sad. And depressing. And despicable.

That last one isn't to describe him, but to describe the simpering suck ups yelling for him to jump while he stands on the metaphorical ledge, threatening to hurt himself in ways he'll never be able to undo. These people saluting Jenner for trying to become a woman are really no different than lunatics congratulating an emaciated anorexic for imagining she's 300 pounds overweight. Both harbor harmful, destructive, and inaccurate perceptions about themselves, and both need help changing their perceptions, not their bodies.

Yet he will receive no such help because that would hurt the "transgender" agenda, and "transgenderism" is the new unholy grail of modern progressivism.

Liberals have already managed to legally redefine what constitutes a human being, and now they've set out to redefine what constitutes a man and a woman. As usual, they are having overwhelming success and meeting virtually no resistance along the way.

Every day, the media treats us to another breathless screed about how transgenders are finally "having their moment." We are at the "transgender tipping point," as Time put it. Transgender acceptance is "the civil rights issue of our time," according to the vice president.

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Kids are learning in school that boys can have girl brains and girls can have boy brains. Worst of all, children are now being labeled "transgendered" and traipsed around as props by gay activists if they decide to "identify" as the opposite gender when they're still in pull ups. Evidently, when a 2-year-old boy says he's a girl, we ought to take the pronouncement quite seriously.

My son is 2 and has for several months self-identified as a tyrannosaurus rex. Should I rewatch "Jurassic Park" to get ideas on how to raise an extinct reptile? Or should I assume he's a small child and small children have active imaginations and a very tenuous grasp on reality? I think I prefer the second option, although the moment he sprouts into a five ton lizard and tries to eat my car, I'll certainly reconsider.

But my son's dinosaur pretensions are just a bit of harmless fun. "Transgenderism," on the other hand, is a dangerous road to a dark place.

The former top psychiatrist at John's Hopkins, Dr. Chapman, penned a Wall Street journal article several months ago, making it clear that "transgenders" are mentally disordered. Boldly affirming the indisputable findings of every credible biologist who's ever existed, Dr. Chapman reported that sex change is biologically impossible, and to tell a transgender he can be "reassigned" or "transitioned" from one gender to the other is to "promote and collaborate with mental illness."

As the doctor points out, "transgenders" have a suicide rate 20 times higher than the general population -- after surgery. Naturally, we're told the astronomically high rates of suicide, drug abuse, and depression among gender confused people can be blamed on "bullying," but this is a convenient and dishonest assumption. The truth is, "transgenders" are plagued with a mental delusion that makes it difficult for them to accept reality, which may tempt them to permanently escape it. The best thing we can do is help them to accept the world for what it is and themselves for who they are. The worst thing we can do is play along with a fantasy that's clearly causing them immense torment and pain.

It never occurs to these exceedingly "tolerant" do-gooders that transgenders are killing themselves, abusing drugs, and carving their bodies into pieces because they are unhappy. They are unhappy before surgery, and often even less happy afterwards. They are self-loathing. They are desperate. The last thing -- the absolute last thing -- they need is to be told they should embrace their mental illness and believe whatever lies it tells them about themselves.

Bruce Jenner has a male anatomy, male chromosomes, male DNA, male hormones, a male bone structure, and male reproductive organs. He is a male. He can never be anything but a male. He is not a woman "for all intents and purposes," for the same reason that I am not an antelope or a pine cone for all intents and purposes. Indeed, it is specifically my "intents and purposes" that make me neither a pine cone nor an antelope and Jenner neither a woman nor "transgendered."

He can grow out his hair and shop in the women's section at Barneys, but none of that will have any impact on his practical physiological disposition. He can change his wardrobe, but that will not change his DNA. He can ask us to use different pronouns when addressing him, but that won't cause him to start ovulating or lactating.

He can "feel" like a woman, but shockingly, those feelings will never manifest in a uterus or ovaries.

The progressive will respond, no doubt, that sex and gender are two different things, as they continue to labor under the impression that you can invent a distinction between two concepts by calling them different names.

You can't. That's the entire point here.

Transgender theory and "gender is a social construct" theory contradict each other, anyway. Progressives tell us that "gender" is a societal invention which imposes certain expectations of behavior and appearance on men and women. Society, we're informed, oppresses the human person by forcing it to act and look a certain way based solely on its anatomy.

Personally, I think these "gender roles" are often good, useful, and important, but even if I accepted their version of things, "transgenderism" would still be nonsensical. Perhaps more so.

In demolishing the gender "social construct" isn't the whole point to create a society where men can act in ways traditionally associated with women and women can act in ways traditionally associated with men? If gender is indeed a social construct then it seems the ultimate goal would be a culture where men can wear sports bras and yoga pants and still be considered men. But progressives defeat their own point by next telling us that when a man acts like a woman, he actually is one, which is odd considering they just got through telling us there's no such thing as "acting like a woman."

They went from insisting that "social constructs" prevent men from wearing skirts to informing us that if a man wears a skirt he's now a woman. They've not only reinforced gender stereotypes, but given them a power not even the most ardent gender traditionalist would have ever conceived of.

Either men and women can defy these gender expectations, or they can't. But if defying the expectation actually turns them into the other gender, then they can't defy them.

Why is this so hard to understand?

And why is it harder to understand that I can be as tolerant and accepting a person as have ever existed in the universe, but I still can't accept Bruce Jenner as a woman?

I cannot accept it because this is not a question about Bruce Jenner; it's a question about nature and reality. If I go around calling him a her and speaking fondly of his decision to "transition" from what he is into something he can never be, I have not merely "accepted" Bruce Jenner, I have accepted the impossible, radical, illogical, preposterous, outrageous progressive doctrine of sex and gender.

And it's not just progressive faux-science I'd be accepting, but progressive faux-theology.

Jenner, like many "transgender," defends his decision to "transition" by explaining that he has "the soul of a female." I was reminded of this today by a progressive atheist who quite matter-of-factly informed me that sometimes people's souls don't match their bodies. It's fascinating that suddenly, after decades of shoving secularism down our throats, left wingers have discovered the human soul, and summarily assessed that in some cases it's been mismatched, like brown socks with black pants.

I guess that's what they mean when they say "transgenders" have been "assigned" the wrong sex. I always wondered, assigned by whom? And if this entity is powerful enough to give us souls, how could it be so clumsy and careless about it?

It seems we've again arrived at another contradiction. If there is no God, then there is no spirit realm, then there is no soul. And if there is no soul, and no God, and no other dimension outside of the physical, then we are our bodies and only our bodies. From the entirely atheistic, secular view, "transgenderism" is an utter impossibility. We are material. We are only material. So whatever we are can be ascertained by an inspection of the material. Thus, if our DNA, anatomy, reproductive systems, hormones, and chromosomes indicate "man," we are men. End of discussion. That's all there is.

However, if the "transgender" soul exists, then souls exist, then an immaterial spiritual dimension exists, then God exists. And if God exists, He created us. And if God exists and created us, then He is both all powerful and omnipotent. And if he is both all powerful and omnipotent then it is impossible for Him to accidentally put a soul in the "wrong" body. Impossible. It cannot happen.

Of course, people are sometimes born with physical deformities, and these cannot be blamed on God "making a mistake." We are mortal beings in a fallen world in which sickness, death, and deformity are a temporary feature. But the "transgender" theory is not one that posits a physical deformity, but that a mistake was made in the actual creation of the human person. To believe in a fallible, mistake-prone God is to believe in no God at all, which brings you back to atheism, which again disqualifies "transgenderism."

In truth, we do have souls and we do have bodies. Only, it's not totally accurate to say that we "have" either. We don't have them, we are them. We are both our souls and our bodies. The latter is not merely a cage or a shell for the former. The two are inextricable, and together they form one. A single nature. A single person. So if your body is a man, so is your soul, and if your soul is a man, so is your body. If you begin to believe otherwise, the problem is not with your soul or with your anatomy, but with your perception of these things.

The answer, then, is perhaps complicated and imperfect. I can't say that psychological treatment will completely "cure" a man of his delusions that he is a woman, but I know for sure that a sex change operation and hormone pills won't cure a man of the fact that he is a man.

I don't accept Bruce Jenner as a woman. I don't accept "transgender" as an actual state of human existence. I recognize it as an illusion, a sickness, and a burden. I pray that those afflicted seek real help instead of pursuing something they can never attain.

I pray that they learn to accept themselves as they are, because in the end, that's truly the only choice we have.

Listen to Matt's latest podcast here. Contact him with general comments and speaking requests at MattWalsh@TheMattWalshBlog.com

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