A Long Distance

George Saunders is a famous postmodernist writer. He’s also mega-woke because wokeism is an outgrowth of postmodern thought.

But it’s really funny because his books show how far leftism has traveled in only a few years. In Saunders’s 2006 short story collection In Persuasion Nation, there’s a character who’s an irate, prudish conservative. This character insists that… get this… feminine men are actually women, and mainly women are really men. If a man has longish hair, a soft voice and a passion for baking, he’s really a lady.

In the short story, this is all presented as sexist insanity coming from an angry conservative. Fast forward to today, and conservatives are banned from social media for saying that a dude with a soft voice, long hair and a penchant for baking is still a dude. I watch these dissident far-right podcasts in secret where people say that women who don’t like color pink and frilly dresses are still women. Shhh, don’t tell anybody I know. I don’t want to be a social pariah.

It’s very funny that in 2006 liberals worried that conservatives would insist that any deviation from the most rigid sex stereotypes meant you are actually the opposite sex. And then those same liberals went and did exactly that. I wonder if Saunders remembers that story he authored as he diligently refers to dudes in dresses as “she” and rants about “life-saving gender care”.