We live in a culture-wide form of mental illness about human identity and purpose; a resentment of the body, its imperfections and limitations. At its worst, this frustration with the “givenness” of flesh and blood reality flowers into violence, like this week’s Annunciation School shooting in Minneapolis. The killer was a man with gender dysphoria. He had transitioned to a “woman”—or rather tried to, since a genuine transition is impossible. He inflicted his fury on innocent children. The murders and woundings were horrific. And in the midst of the suffering, the Minneapolis mayor’s worry that someone might villainize the transsexual community because of the killer’s anti-Catholic hate spree was ill-timed, if not grotesque. But it was also revealing. Gender ideology is infectious. And the first healthy human quality it attacks is common sense.
