You identify as what?

Normalizing the outlandish does not make the world a better place.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I hope that you are celebrating the holiday by doing things that you like with people you like. Feel free to tell me what’s bringing you joy in the comments section.

Because my wife works the night shift this week, we had to our Thanksgiving meal early in the morning right after she came home from work. As we were cleaning the dishes before she went to bed, she asked me if I'd heard of people who identify as “furries.”

I have, I told her, heard of furries. But as far as I know it's mostly a rumor ginned up on social media as a cudgel to bash the gender identity movement.

Now times being what they are, outlandish doesn't mean that there's absolutely no truth to this or anything else. There are people out there who identify as all sorts of crazy things that aren't true. One example is a local somnologist who passes on witty, useful, courageous and other identities that even he knows are a bad fit to identify as smart - based on teaching a course in philosophy.

The gender identity movement is not exactly undeserving of ridicule. Gender dysphoria, albeit real, is uncommon. We should, of course, treat genuine cases of gender dysphoria compassionately and with all of the tools that modern medicine has at it's disposal. I've known people who suffered from gender dysphoria and seemed happier after transitioning. Good for them. One day you're going to be dead a long time. In the meantime, by all means, lead your best life.

But not a single one of those folks suffered from the delusion that they were a newly-minted, full-fledged member of the opposite sex – something that's not biologically possible. Their new selves were simply closer to what they felt they should be than nature had arranged for them at birth.

That should be enough for all concerned. Unfortunately, it is not. It's not good enough for the gender woke for anyone to just be content living a life of their choosing. Everyone else has to be along for the ride, like it or not.

A favorite movie of mine, Lars and the Real Girl, is a 2007 film about a troubled young man who introduces an anatomically correct sex doll as his chaste girlfriend to family, friends and co-workers in a small Wisconsin town. Lars is surrounded by people who like and care about him. Everyone goes along with the charade by treating “Bianca” like a real person. She's hired for a job modeling in a store window, she gets a makeover in a local salon, she attends school board meetings. In every way she's treated like a part of the community.

I like Lars and the Real Girl because it shows people going out of their way to help someone for no reason other than kindness. Through the course of the film, Lars works through his issues and eventually frees himself by allowing Bianca to pass due to an untreatable illness.

No one in Lars orbit actually thinks that Bianca is real. Everyone is aware that she's a “RealDoll” acquired from an adult site on the Internet. The townspeople go along with the ruse because they care about Lars and are convinced by the town's doctor that it's the best way to help him through his issues. No one proposes a law requiring that Bianca be acknowledged as actually sentient. No one is censured for not playing along. There are no laughable academic studies showing that a sex doll is the same as a “birthing person.” No one equates dissent with cruelty or violence in order to advance Bianca's cause.

But all of that was in 2007. If Lars and the Real Girl were made today it might be called Lars and Galatea. The modern film's denouement more akin to Ovid's story of Pygmalion (from which the original draws inspiration) by having Bianca transform into an actual person. This because these days the lines between reality and fantasy are often blurred - not just in film, but in real life. Especially if reality interferes with something that a noisy enough group of people want.

Perhaps the most egregious overreach of the cultural left is the gender identity movement. One's gender has, for generations, been universally taken as a proxy for one's biological sex. But in the postmodern world this is no longer true. On this account you have to acknowledge the left's dexterity in the Orwellian practice of controlling thought by conscripting language.

As heretofore successful as the gender identity movement has been, when one strips away the the lousy scholarship, the bad science and the browbeating, there's simply not much of substance left. Gender identity comes down to a carrot and stick before and after a of a pile of nonsense. The carrot is virtue signaling, the stick is punishing dissent.

Fortunately I think that this trend has peaked and is on the verge of decline. The issue of biological males competing in women's spots won't go unchallenged much longer and is already swaying public opinion in the wrong direction for the gender identity crowd. Preferred pronouns are not a big hit anywhere outside of a few woke bubbles.

Outside of the U.S., the principle medical tools used in gender transitioning: puberty blockers and gender-affirming surgeries, are under a lot of scrutiny – especially for minors. Nearly all of the serious research done on these therapies reveals serious and irreversible side effects. In many cases counseling should clearly be an alternative. As an increasing number of researchers continue to stand up against mob rule and for good science, the worst of this nonsense should go into decline and disrepute.

In Lars and the Real Girl, everyone went along because they were kind and caring and wanted Lars to come to peace with himself and his situation. But they never lost sight of the fact that Bianca wasn't real. They did not allow their kindness to morph into some Orwellian dystopia. They didn't punish dissent. They didn't browbeat the town doctor into submission.

And in the end, Lars goes for a walk with a real girl. It was a pleasant outcome.

Associated Press and Idaho Press Club-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist, writer and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time with family, riding bicycles and motorcycles, arranging and playing music. His writing on Substack, “Howlin' at the Moon in ii-V-I” may be found at martinhackworth.substack.com. Follow him on Twitter @MartinHackworth