Somebody on FB was commenting on this article and said, very correctly, that the practice of legally changing birth certificates to make them state facts that were clearly untrue began when birth parents were erased from birth certificates and adoptive parents were placed there instead. And nobody seemed to fucking care that the very existence of something like truth, history and facts was denied by these acts.
9 responses to “No Truth”
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Liked the article – thanks for sharing – and so I started to read his previous columns. Turns out that ‘everything goes’ attitude regarding gender in/and documents is accompanied by “Victorian-era system of censorship that controls images of sex, fun and partying in a significant area of public life: advertising.”
Is there any connection or are those unconnected, contradictory elements of today’s culture?
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I loved this one especially: “The ASA ruling stated: ‘Because we considered the ad placed an emphasis on the burger being the preferable option to the salad, we concluded it condoned poor nutritional habits or an unhealthy lifestyle, especially in children, and that it disparaged good dietary practice.’” It’s hilarious.
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Loved some of his thoughts in the article on the calls to ‘keep calm and carry on’ after terror attacks:
http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/stand-up-to-atrocity-london-attack/19915#.WXjz0YjyuUk
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I’ll be honest, I don’t see why the government or whoever else sees a birth certificate needs to know The Truth about what someone’s genitals looked like when they were born. On a practical level, having a birth certificate with one’s birth sex on it could end up leading to a trans person being outed. Depending on where you are, you could need a birth certificate to obtain or renew a driver’s license or to get married. I don’t feel like I owe that level of honestly to whoever’s helping me at the DMV. And I’m sure trans people don’t want to have to worry about whether whoever they’re getting outed to is a bigot or not.
I gave the article a chance. But like every transgender related article you post, it just made me roll my eyes. I liked the ASA article better; the world changes, but indignant busybodies are always a constant.
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I’m only interested in the consumerist post-truth aspect of this. Forget transgender, it can be adopted children or anything else. What interests me is the idea that there is no truth beyond an immediate subjective sensation.
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I just tend to be more interested in the concrete reality of how policies affect people’s lives than nebulous theory when it comes to things like this. Not that I don’t enjoy theory (I read this blog, after all.)
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It bothers me profoundly that the only shared principle, the only article of faith for progressive movements is the worship of consumerism (i.e. individual choices). It’s a superficial, empty philosophy that will fail in the face of any powerful emotion or idea.
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Makes it next to impossible to determine possible hereditary disorders in said adopted individual.
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Exactly. It’s inhuman and wrong. And it’s information that doesn’t belong to anybody but the child. Nobody should have the right to withhold it.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
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