You can't call a freak a freak

Sometimes I feel like I’m living in a parallel universe. I came across a story about how to correctly speak to a transgender. Not a transexual, mind you. Transgender. Generally speaking, transexuals are people who have gone through a sex change operation; most famously, what Bruce Jenner is going through. Transgenders are basically guys who like to dress up as women. It’s what we used to refer to as transvestites.

This article covered the finer points of not offending transgender people and speaking in politically correct terms. So, I posted the story to Twitter and said they forgot one term: freak. Oh, you’d have thought I’d written a scathing review of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. People called it #hatespeech and said I was a #bigot and I was, like, #Idon’tcare. This led to a back and forth between several tweeters and me that spilled over to my radio show.

They were telling me that I have no right to discriminate against a guy who wears a dress. Think about that for a moment. You’ve got Bob in the office who’s set to make the big pitch to the meeting of clients and the morning of, Bob comes walking into the conference room in a dress with lipstick and a wig. And we’re not supposed to think Bob’s a freak? And if we can’t “discriminate” then we allow Bob to lose the account and possibly millions of dollars in the process. Is that the kind of wacked-out world these folks think we live in? Again, parallel universe.

Let’s just say I’m at a restaurant and some dude shows up to take my order in fishnet hose and a mini-skirt. Am I just supposed to roll with that because I’m hip or I’m “with it” or I don’t want to be a dinosaur? Somebody has to say this is crazy and I’m here to say just that.

Look, I don’t care what you do on your own time. If you’re a guy and you wanna dress up like a chick and paint the town red, go right ahead. But don’t act like I’m nuts because I think you are. For those of you who don’t think there’s anything wrong with a guy showing up at work one day in a dress, how about if he showed up wearing nothing at all. There are those people, too. The “clothing-optional” crowd thinks that we weren’t meant to wear clothing and that we’re meant to be au naturel. Any problem with Bob showing up in the nude? Oh, you have a problem with that? What are you, a dinosaur?

Every generation wants to push the limits of conformity. I’m not necessarily against being an iconoclast. In fact, I’m probably one myself. There are, however, certain societal norms and guys being guys and girls being girls is one of those norms. But, here’s what they say now. Your sex is what you were born with. Your gender is who you think you are. Really? No, it’s pretty cut and dried. Your gender is your sex. The dictionary defines gender as “either the male or female division of a species.” 

We were made male and female for a reason. Gender is designed for the progression of the species, including the human species. Anyone who defies gender definition is going against the norms of nature. You certainly have every right to do it, but we have a right to call it what it is. It’s a person who exhibits a strange deviation from nature. And that is literally the dictionary definition of a freak.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.