Sam Smith — Woke or Mental?
Sam Smith is an incredibly talented artist. The world is very much at their feet as they ascend the world of pop music. Winners of several Brit Awards, they are a real homegrown talent.
Sam is also non-binary. They don’t identify with either of the two available genders. No gender pronouns for Sam, it’s “they” or “them”, or, well, nothing. There is even a noun for this, a “binaire” is a person who does not wish to be identified on the basis of gender.
Spell checking this article has been a nightmare for me.
I want to be completely respectful of Sam and their choices. They are their choices, and certainly none of my business.
Reading over these first few paragraphs, I am overwhelmed with confusion. My writing does not make a damn bit of sense.
Have I used the correct pronoun?
Why is it a plural article not a singular? Is it at all, or have I picked it up wrong?
Have I suffered some sort of neurological impairment?
Truly, I am not quite sure on the answers to any of those questions. I feel strongly that I have neither banged my head nor lost my mind, but I am second-guessing my grip on reality.
My overarching emotion is one of utter bewilderment. It is bonkers, all this non-binary stuff. It’s like the poetry of Coleridge, it just doesn’t make sense.
I strongly, fervently believe in an individuals rights. I am all for freedom of choice and the ability to express identity is sacred.
However, I am concerned that our “woke” generation has unwittingly created a plethora of problems for young people. My concern lies with the fabric of our society and the culture of enablement that makes gender fluidity even an option.
How have we strayed so far away from reality?
Gender is life. That is the easiest way of putting it. One cannot exist without a gender. I would therefore contest, that, to be unhappy with your gender, is sure to be unhappy with life. It strikes right at the heart of existentialism.
If I am a man, and all I have ever known in my own life — how can I possibly identify as anything other than the male gender? In the same way that I do not identify as a bear because I am not 300 kilos of furry muscle, I do not identify as a female, because I do not possess a vagina.
A flippant example, you might think, but is it? The concept is the same; I cannot identify as something that I am not.
Role Models. Sam is famous. Sam has a societal responsibility as a result of that fame. Kids look up to him and aspire toward the success that he has achieved. Sam’s decisions lend gender fluidity a veneer of plausibility because of this.
It’s not like admiring Mark Zuckerberg for dropping out of Harvard, though, it is posing needlessly existential problems to young minds.
Social Media. Kids now are growing up with Twitter, Facebook and the like. While the fallacy of gender fluidity never occurred to me as a child, because I didn’t have a smartphone, it has now become a kind of self-fulfilling fallacy for our kids these days.
Fake news, electoral interference and graphic content are all very real concerns for our social media giants at the moment. I would suggest that a growing audience of underage users is also an issue — after all, in our formative years, are we not all vulnerable to the things that we read?
I am glad that I seldom strayed from the soothing fables of Roald Dahl or JK Rowling as I was growing up.
What of the kids who see this arrant nonsense, and decide they want an irreversible gender transition? What about the irredeemable psychological damage caused by introspection around your very existence?
Sex is all part of the genetic lottery that we are unwilling participants in.
I like the choice. I like deciding what I am going to have for dinner or where I am going on holiday or what book I want to read next. These are things that are within my control and add to the rich tapestry of life.
Sometimes, I wish I was born somewhere sunnier. Australia, maybe, or South-East Spain. I wish there had been more slim men in my family, and that those men had fuller and thicker hair. It would have been great to have had a Great Great Grandfather who made his fortune in Gold, but alas, such luck escapes me.
I am at ease with what I have. My destiny is my own to control, and, most of the time, I am content.
Being content within your own skin is really what matters in life. I worry that our kids growing up today are being presented with choices that are flippant and nonsensical in equal measures. If you are born a man, that is the destiny that the fates have dealt. Learn to love it.
Sam, I wish you nothing but happiness my friend and I respect your choices.
