What Is a Man?

With his usual brilliant style, Dr Warren looks at a vexatious question. In this day of 'wokeism' and 'cancel culture', what is a man?

From Essays in Idleness

By Dr David Warren

At a time when the Woke people are discussing — or more precisely avoiding the discussion of — what is a woman, I should like to glance at the even more trivial question of what is a man.

Of course, I say “trivial” only in light of current social conventions, one of which is to use the word “social” in a vaguely malicious way. The reader may have heard of human individuals, and even the late Mrs Thatcher allowed “families” to be grouped apart from the general population. But revolutionists, from the Communists to the Patriots of old, and looking back sometimes to Solon, preferred to use “the people” as the only practical plural of “person.”

I may be over-simplifying; for I’ve been told all about American Exceptionalism, by the Trumpestuous faction. It differs from other forms of national exceptionalism because it is distinctly United Statist. But in the Russian national anthem I was just listening to, there would seem to be a second-person reference: “You are unique in the world, one of a kind!” Also it is uniquely, “This native land, protected by God!” I will not vouch for this translation, however, as I got it from the Wicked Paedia. (Grammatically, I do not see how “they” could be “one of a kind.”)

My own notation, should it be called for, is that family (which I sometimes misspell “fambly”) tends to be neglected in any description of “the mass” (not in the Catholic sense), and is as undistinctive as any comparable collection of mush. It makes as little sense as “woman,” to the blind, sexless, and mentally unresponsive.

There is general agreement that he/she/it is an “organism.” Even a candidate for the American Supreme Court will admit to possessing knowledge of that much biology, though anything more would be deemed controversial. The most recent such candidate is what would formerly have been called “a woman,” but not any more, except after the adjective “black.”

A man, it follows, has now lost his status as a male human being, as he can no longer be distinguished from a woman. Moreover, being human would seem an insufficient argument against being eaten, by one’s own kind. But that kind is fading. I spend part of my time in hospitals, these days, where I can report that we are all treated as organisms. Some distinctions continue to be made by the organisms, themselves, though nothing systematic. Chiefly, they go into various departments, according to their disease.

Is there a way to categorize dead men — that would be satisfactory to the Wokists, or any allied group of post-human revolutionists? I cannot think of one, for after death, such superficial identifiers as previously were “an issue” gradually disappear, or quickly vanish thanks to modern cremation technology.

On the other hand, I gather that archaeologists can still determine what the experts now call “gender” from corpses that were discarded many thousand years ago; and DNA samples are often used to establish fambly members. Too, past funerary customs sometimes allow even a modern to distinguish the rich from the poor.

The methods are not always certain, but then, the fate of the world in “global warming” is uncertain yet. We must be patient.