Audio only:
In this episode Trent shows how to apply a common Internet meme to liberal moral hypocrisy.
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Trent Horn (00:00):
Last month, feminist Jill Flipovic tried to flip the script on people who rightly call out transgender lunacy by posting this. If we’re going to ban gender affirming surgeries for minors, we should ban all cosmetic surgery for minors. A 15-year-old should not be getting a nose job. A 16-year-old should not be getting a boob job. Exceptions, of course, are medically necessary procedures. The post blew up so badly in Flipovich’s face that she deleted it, but it reminded me of a common meme that ably summarizes how Christians can turn the tables on their liberal critics. But before I reveal what that meme is, I want to let you know that if you subscribe to this channel, you help us grow and reach more people, and if you support us for as little as $5 a month, you get access to bonus theology courses and other premium content at trenhornpodcast.com.
(00:50):
And you help us keep those annoying ad reads out of the episodes. I hope that you find these terms acceptable and support us at trenthornpodcast.com. And so it’s no coincidence the meme we’re talking about today is the, your terms are acceptable meme. He’s the base Christian who proposes something sane. And then a secular liberal critic says, “Well, by that logic, you have to support this other thing I consider insane.” Of course, the based Christian knows the other thing is also sane. So he simply says, “Your terms are acceptable.” Flipivic’s now deleted post is a perfect example of this. She justifies so- called gender affirming surgery by saying teenagers have the right to alter their bodies in any way that makes them feel comfortable. So if a transgender teen boy who claims to be a girl isn’t allowed to get breast implants that makes them feel more comfortable and claiming to be a girl, then Christian should be consistent under Flipivic’s view and not allow teen girls to get breast implants that make them feel more comfortable, to which I say, “Your terms are acceptable.” In fact, there’s so much wrong with Flipivic’s argument.
(01:56):
I don’t even know where to begin. First, she probably deleted the post because she said the quiet part out loud by admitting that so- called gender assignment surgery is an elective procedure that just affects your feelings and doesn’t treat an identifiable pathology. It’s more like plastic surgery than reconstructive surgery. For example, a mastectomy to remove cancerous breast tissue is medically necessary because of the threat cancer poses to the whole body. Doctors can objectively discover something is wrong with the breast tissue and this justifies removing it. However, in gender dysphoria, there is nothing wrong with the patient’s tissue, and removing it simply because a woman doesn’t want breasts anymore is mutilation, not medicine. It’s no different than people with body identity integrity disorder who can walk, but cosplay is being wheelchair bound. Their desire for doctors to sever their spinal cords is mutilation because the defect in the person is not something physical in the spine, is something mental in the mind that requires therapy, not surgery that causes paraplegia.
(03:01):
This is also true in cases like surgery to treat gynecomastia or large breasts in men, or breast reduction surgery in women. Doctors can still identify things like hormone imbalances that have created breast tissue that is unnaturally large for the patient in question. But even if such surgery wasn’t strictly a medical procedure, it was also justified by patient comfort. This leads to my second point. There’s a big difference between cosmetic surgery that slightly changes appearance like nose jobs or rhinoplasty and surgery that destroys or greatly impairs genitals and secondary sex organs like breasts. When a procedure has relatively little risk of serious lifelong negative consequences, it’s more appropriate to allow minors to access it. And third, anyone who is really gung-ho about teen girls getting breast implants should have their hard drives and internet history checked. This isn’t the own Flipovic thinks it is because most regular people would agree with the FDA’s recommendation that breast implants be reserved for adults, given the serious consequences for such a major surgery.
(04:08):
The only justification for minors would be if the procedure was a reconstructive treatment for something like Poland syndrome, a rare condition where one pectoral muscle or breast is completely missing. What’s going on in this exchange and others like it is that the critic is using a reduxio ad absurdum. She’s trying to say the Christian position is false because it leads to an absurd conclusion. In some cases, the Christian has to show the absurd conclusion is only in the critic’s head, like thinking outlawing abortion will require autopsies for every miscarried embryo. Against that claim, a Christian can point out that it is illegal to murder 90 year olds, but less than 1% of natural deaths in this age group receive autopsies because they already have a high mortality rate. The same is true for the high mortality rate of children at the very beginning of their lives, who it should still be illegal to intentionally kill, even if autopsies are not performed on these children who naturally die at a high rate at this stage of life.
(05:06):
But in other cases, a Christian can just embrace the critic’s absurd conclusion because it’s not actually absurd. As I said before, if you’re not willing to outlaw destructive gender surgery for children because you really want to make sure teen girls can get elective breast augmentation, then I’m going to have to ask you to take a seat because I want to know what you’re doing here. Hey, how are you? Good.
(05:29):
Why don’t you seat right over there? Sure.
(05:31):
But most regular people find both of these surgeries to be inappropriate, so there is no contradiction. And you can see this in a few other examples of the your terms are acceptable meme in action. For example, taking children to Hooters is wildly inappropriate for kids too, but a lot of conservatives furious about grooming via drag queen story hour are just fine with that. No, I’m not just fine with that. In fact, I’ve never met anyone who is against kids attending LGBT drag shows, but also thinks it’s just fine to take kids to Hooters. But I will say Hooters attacks children’s innocence through immodesty, which is bad, but it’s even worse to attack a child’s innocence by exposing him or her to unspeakable perversity. So you say we shouldn’t though let kids go to drag shows or restaurants. Your terms are acceptable. If abortion is illegal, then a man leaving a girl who’s pregnant should be illegal too.
(06:27):
If women can’t back out of pregnancy, neither should men. You realize we already have this and it’s called marriage, so your terms are acceptable. Here’s another one. In 2019, Alyssa Milano called on women to have a sex strike and refused to have sex until state bans on abortion were repealed. Of course, many of the women who took up this challenge tended to not look like Alyssa Milano, and in the absence of a sparkling personality, it makes it easy to say to them, “Your terms are acceptable.” So as I said before, in some cases, you can refute the Reduxiou out absurdum by just showing the absurdim isn’t absurd. But in other cases, you need to call out the absurdity as only having a reality in the critic’s mind. You can see that in this parody law that claims if abortion is banned, then all men must be forced to get physectomies because abortion bans force women to give birth or something.
(WVTM News) (07:22):
State representative Rolanda Hollis’s bill would require a man to get a vasectomy within one month of his 50th birthday or the birth of his third child, whichever comes first and at his own expense. Hollis notes, while many see the bill as an overstep, she says year after year, legislation is introduced that tries to dictate a woman’s body and her reproductive rights. First,
Trent Horn (07:48):
Contrary to what many feminists say, there is a law that only affects men’s bodies, not women’s. At the age of 18, every male US citizen must register for selective service, which means their bodies can be conscripted to fight in a war if the military draft is reinstated. Second, I’m always baffled by people who are so full of delusional opposition to pro- lifers that they think the only reason pro- lifers want to oppose abortion is because they want to control women. It’s one thing to say, “Well, pro- lifers are against abortion because they don’t want children to be killed. They’re wrong about that, but that’s what they think. ” It’s one thing to think that, but it’s something else entirely if you think pro- lifers only want to control women and don’t care about unborn children at all. Now, the pro- life position would be anti-woman if men were allowed to get abortions and women were not.
(08:41):
Or it would be anti-woman if abortions were allowed whenever the father of the unborn child permitted it, but not the mother. So that would be anti-woman. And I don’t know where anyone would get an idea that we are anti-women in that sense, though it doesn’t help when people like Nick Fuentes say, “Your body, my choice.”
Nick Fuentes (08:59):
Hi, I’m your Republican Congressman. It’s your body, my choice.
Trent Horn (09:06):
Because what is the choice Fuentes is talking about? If it’s the choice to have sex, then the woman gets a choice too, otherwise it’s rape. If it’s the choice to have an abortion, then men don’t have a choice on that issue either. Men don’t get to choose if women have abortions because no one should be able to choose that because abortion kills innocent human beings. That’s why I’m baffled when pro- choicers think pro- lifers only oppose abortion because they just want to oppress women. Even intelligent pro- choice advocates recognize this is a farce. People like philosopher Nathan Nobus, who I previously debated who says the following. Pro-lifers might be trying to control women, but they might be trying to ban abortion because they believe that abortion is wrong and should be illegal. Again, critics of abortion might respond that abortion advocates just want to engage in immorality without consequences.
(09:57):
Is that true? No pro- choice advocates argue. Speculations about motives don’t engage or critique any arguments anyone might give for their views, and so are unwise and fruitless. But here’s abortionist Warren Hearn comparing pro- lifers to the Taliban, a Muslim Afghan terror group that does things like throw acid on women’s faces who are just trying to go to school.
Warren Hearn (10:18):
We don’t have to invade other countries to find the terrorists. They’re here killing doctors who do abortions. The main difference between the American anti-abortion movement and the Taliban is about 8,000 miles.
Trent Horn (10:31):
And what sets us back as a movement and makes people think we hate women is when prominent figures on the right, like Nick Fuentes, say vile garbage like this.
Nick Fuentes (10:40):
Women are made to be literally. Women exist for sex. That is why they are mothers or they are whores or they are nuns. End of list. Women are either mothers, whores or nuns, no other options. There are no female philosophers, there are no female inventors, there are no female generals or billionaires. They are mothers, whores, nuns, end of list. That’s what you can be.
Trent Horn (11:05):
Of course, this is a crazy thing to say for someone who claims to be Catholic, given that the church has been blessed with married saints who did things beyond just having children. People like St. John Amola, who is a physician, or St. Theresa’s mother, Zelie Martin, who ran a business with her husband, and has been blessed with brilliant female philosophers like Edith Stein, who later became a nun and GEM and Scome who coined the term consequentialism in her critique of modern morality. So to pull everything together as Christians, we need to show those who disagree with us that the logical consequences of the Christian worldview are not insane. They are either fever, dream worries without basis in reality, or they’re not as crazy as you might think. If you like a good book to explain these moral issues to people of all ages, I recommend mine and Layla Miller’s book, Made This Way, How to Prepare Kids to Talk Abo Today’s Tough Moral Issues.
(11:54):
I hope this episode was helpful for you, and if you want to help us create more episodes like this, please support us at trrenthornpodcast.com. Thank you guys so much, and I hope you have a very blessed day.