Steyn on Society's "Trans"-formation

Mark Steyn's new book, a collection of his articles, is set to drop tomorrow. (You can get your very own autographed copy here.) To whet your appetite, here's a delectable morsel included in the book. It's about the pointlessness of electing conservatives when the culture has been seized by those power-hungry micro-managers (a.k.a. the Left):

Even in the squishiest Continental “social democracy,” once every four or five years you can persuade the electorate to go out and vote for a conservative party. But if you want them to vote for conservative government you have to do the hard work of shifting the culture every day, seven days a week, in the four-and-a-half years between elections.If the culture’s liberal, if the schools are liberal, if the churches are liberal, if the hip, groovy business elite is liberal, if the guys who make the movies and the pop songs are liberal, then electing a guy with an “R” after his name isn’t going to make a lot of difference. 

Nor should it. In free societies, politics is the art of the possible. In the 729 days between elections, the left is very good at making its causes so possible that in American politics almost anything of consequence is now impossible, from enforcing immigration law to controlling spending. 

What will we be playing catch-up to in another 28 years? Not so long ago, I might have suggested transsexual rights. But, barely pausing to celebrate their victory on gay marriage, the identity-group enforcers have gone full steam ahead on transgender issues. Once upon a time there were but two sexes. Now Facebook offers its 1.2 billion patrons the opportunity to select their preference from dozens of “genders”: “male” and “female” are still on the drop-down menu, just about, but lost amid fifty shades of gay — “androgynous,” “bi-gender,” “intersex,” “cisfemale,” “trans*man,” “gender fluid” . . . 

Oh, you can laugh. But none of the people who matter in American culture are laughing.  

They take it all perfectly seriously...

Update: FYI, here's how Ontario's official "human rights" diktat puts it:

Trans or transgender is an umbrella term referring to people with diverse gender identities and expressions that differ from stereotypical gender norms. It includes but is not limited to people who identify as transgender, trans woman (male-to-female), trans man (female-to-male), transsexual, cross-dresser, gender non-conforming, gender variant or gender queer.

A more recent (and more colourful) "umbrella term": "purple penguins".