What Does the Modern Malleability of Gender and Race Mean for the Future of Affirmative Action?

The DNA-derived color of one’s skin — not the content of one’s character — usually alone qualified one for affirmative action. If Shaun King or Rachel Dolezal can become black simply by asserting that they are black, are they then eligible for special minority advantages?

Victor Davis Hanson

"In the present postmodern world, we are told that there is no such thing as a biologically distinct gender. Instead, gender is now socially constructed. It can be defined by the individual in almost any way he or she sees fit.

"In the old days, many clinical psychologists would have believed that Caitlyn Jenner — who first came to fame as Olympian Bruce Jenner — is experiencing a well-chronicled psychological state known as transvestism, or the innate pleasure in wearing the clothes and assuming the manners and appearance of the opposite sex.

"Jenner, however, identifies as transgendered. But even if the term is new, the condition is not. References to people acting or dressing as if they were members of the opposite sex — or somewhere in between — were commonly found in the works of ancient authors such as Catullus and Petronius. The difference is that the Greeks and Romans saw it as a psychosexual condition, while today’s postmoderns insist that the transgendered have assumed a self-constructed and genuinely new sexual identity.

"Have they really?" . . .