Continuing with Robert Cardinal Sarah's book, The Day is Now Far Spent, I'd like to talk about his chapter "Hatred of Man." This is a very perceptive chapter, for Sarah sees that contemporary man has a "contempt for filiation." I have noticed this new tendency myself, expressed most strongly in the transhumanist community (H+) and its associate with the transgender community. Let me offer some quotes for your contemplation:
"Our contemporaries have been convinced that in order to be free, it is necessary for them not to depend on anyone. This is a tragic error. The modern mistrust of all dependence explains many ills. . . . [I]f depending on another person is perceived as a negation of freedom, then every true and lasting relationship appears dangerous. The other person always becomes a potential enemy. Now only a radically autonomous and independent man, a man who is alone, without any bond, can be a free man. He finds that he is shut off in himself. Hence filiation, depending on a father and a mother, becomes for our contemporaries a hindrance to full freedom. We do not choose our parents, we receive them! This first experience is unbearable for contemporary man, who wishes to be the sole cause of everything that happens to him an dof all that he is. To him, receiving appears to be contrary to his dignity. The education that we have received from our parents seems like an offense against a freedom that is though of as self-creating. With greater reason, the idea of receiving our nature as man and woman from a Creator-God becomes humiliating and alienating. In this way of thinking, it is necessary to deny the very notion of human nature or the reality of a sex that has not been chosen. . . . Cold solitude gains ground with every passing day. . . . [A]ll submission to a law, to an order, seems like a form of slavery. [L]atent rebellion and profound resentment settle in man's heart. They are the secret driving forces of a desire to transgress limits continually . . . we push the reality of our freedom by trying all sorts of moral transgressions, while rejecting all the limits of our nature."
That's very profound, and very accurate. Rebellion is the beating heart of this passion to transgress all natural limits and to erase all dependence. The deep hate expressed in rebellion against limits and relationships would destroy every single thing not possessed, enslaved, or subordinated to it. More:
"We must rediscover the fact that our own nature is not an enemy or a prison. It extends a hand to us so that we might cultivate it. Through our nature, ultimately the Creator Himself is the one who extends His hand to us, who invites us to enter into His wise and loving plan for us. He respects our freedom and entrusts our nature to us as a talent that is to be made productive. . . . We all have the experience of being born with a sexed body that we did not choose. This body tells us something about who we are. We have to cultivate our nature and not deny it! Our humanity attains the fullness of its flourishing by accepting the gift of its sexed nature. Our nature indicates the direction in which our freedom can express itself fruitfully and happily. But for the advocates of gender ideology, I can be free only in denying the natural given. . . . In the gender ideology, there is a deep rejection of God the Creator . . . [I]n a world where everything is produced by man, there is nothing human left!"
This, too, is an eloquent expression. There is a deep antipathy towards human biology in the gender ideology movement, a type of biophobia, if you will. But human beings have a material, biological reality that will not be ignored--or that is ignored at our peril. All the modifications made to the body by puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sex reassignment surgery hurt the body and in some cases outright mutilate it. I will not show you the reality of neo-vaginas, but I can show you the reality of what has to be done to perform phalloplasty:
This photo is 2.5 years after the procedure was done. It is difficult not to conclude that this person's arm has been mutilated (and the possessor of the arm certainly believes that is the case). Cardinal Sarah warns us that this road cannot lead to happiness, but only to even greater dissatisfaction.
The Church of Jesus Christ preaches that spirit and body together are the soul of man. Our day, however, exhorts us to a radical dissociation between spirit and body. It even suggests that there can be true enmity between spirit and body. CoJC doctrine, however, suggests that no one is born into the "wrong" body, for there is no such thing as a wrong body.
The contempt for the limits given you by the woman who birthed you also, to my mind, points to the inevitably misogynist nature of H+. There is a scientific footrace on to be the first to eliminate females from gestation and birth. This is the old alchemist's dream--for males to be masters even of birth. While their efforts do seem to be paying off, I take comfort in D&C 132:63, which asserts that God "promised" His daughters before the foundation of the world that they would be the ones to "bear the souls of men."
I'm holding God to that promise in the face of the Nimrodian H+ rebellion we see in our world today.