Glamour is an online women’s magazine published by Condé Nast Publications. It is considered a magazine for millennial and Gen Z beauty-loving women. It publishes articles related to politics, fashion, beauty, and entertainment news. It is also full of quite striking photos of glamorous women. They have also been known to occasionally break with convention in order to get themselves a little more publicity, or to promote some social agenda that they believe in.
Recently, the U.K. edition published one of those controversial issues when they put a pregnant Logan Brown on the cover. Now publishing pictures of pregnant women is not necessarily unusual for Glamour Magazine. They have done that many times over the years. But the cover of this year’s Pride Edition was of a “pregnant man.” Of course, Brown is not actually a man. She is a 27 year old author who was born a woman, but now identifies as a transgender man.
It seems that Brown became pregnant by her partner, Bailey J. Mills. He is a non-binary drag performer in the U.K. (that is, he considers himself a person whose gender cannot be defined within the margins of the male/female binary). Apparently the pregnancy happened while Brown was taking a break from her testosterone treatments due to health issues. While she has had her breasts removed and is taking testosterone treatments, she obviously still has the plumbing of a woman. The “non-binary” (actually male) drag performer got her pregnant in the way that every woman gets pregnant by natural sexual intercourse. Yet, she still claims to be a he.
It’s actually rather weird to read her interview. She was quite shocked when she found out she was pregnant. She said, “… it was like my whole word just stopped. That everything, all my manlihood (sp) that I’ve worked hard for, for so long, just completely felt like it was erased.” Then she fretted about how to break the news to Mills. She reminisced, “It was really hard because how do you tell your partner, ‘Oh, I’m pregnant, but oh, I’m also your boyfriend as well.”
Huh? Let me see if I can sort this out. So Brown is a woman who considers herself to be a man who is in a relationship with “another man” who believes that he cannot be characterized as a male. He considers himself not having a specific gender but is in a relationship with another “man” who is really a woman. This almost seems like a comic sketch, and would be rather funny if it wasn’t actually real. But it is.
Three Take-Aways
So what are we to make of this? There are at least three take-aways.
1. Mental Illnesses are Real
One of the good things that has emerged in modern society is that the stigma that has been associated with mental illness in past times is slowly dissipating. It is still, certainly, a problem, but at least people are now willing to talk about it, and treatments are being developed to help those who struggle with it.
That said, the fact that the stigma is lessening does not mean that the problem does not still exist. And it also doesn’t mean that people can eliminate them just by identifying as “not mentally ill.” People who deny reality and pretend that it is something it is not have a mental problem. In Brown’s case, no matter how much she insists she is a man, no matter how many hormones she takes, and no matter how she surgically alters herself, she is still a woman. She can mutilate her body six ways to Sunday, but NOTHING can change her DNA.
2. Society Can Be Silenced
In 1837, Hans Christian Andersen published his story, The Emperor’s New Clothes. The story is about an emperor who is fooled into believing a tailor is making him some fabulous new clothes, when, in fact, he was making nothing. So in order not to be embarrassed, the emperor somehow came to believe that it was true. And so as not to upset the emperor, all those looking at him pretended to see the new clothes – until a child spoke the truth out loud.
Society will also sometimes do that. When something comes to be widely enough accepted as true or praiseworthy, there can be an unwillingness of the general population to criticize it. That is happening a lot in modern society – and is particularly so when it comes to the transgender issue. Even mainstream Glamour Magazine is pretending that a woman can actually be a man.
3. Ideology Trumps Reality
One last take-away from this is that for most people, ideology trumps reality. It is a plain fact that Brown is a woman. However, the trans ideology has become so accepted in some circles that it is believed as a religious doctrine. At that level, people are perfectly willing to set aside reality and not only accept their delusion as truth, but promote it in the public square as well.
What Is True?
So what it true? Brown may pretend to be a man, but she is a woman. She was born a woman and will be one for the rest of her life – no matter how she identifies. That will not change based on her personal desires and preferences, and it will not change no matter what the media or society proclaims. Reality is reality.