"Look, Ma, I'm Spider-Man!"
If You Call a Tail a Leg, How Many Legs Does a Dog Have?
“Look, ma, I’m Spider-Man!”
We’ve all heard that kid — or been that kid.
NOTE: Of course, I’m not talking about baby goats here, but young humans.That’s what kids do: they play; they fantasize. There’s nothing wrong with that, up to a point. But we all know those kids are not really Spider-Man. In fact, we know there is no such person as Spider-Man — he’s a fictional character. Even the kids play-acting as “Spidey” are usually aware of that.
But what if they aren’t, and they insist on perpetuating the illusion that they really are Spider-Man? In that case, wouldn’t we say that perhaps they have adopted such delusional thinking by imitating some of the “adults” they have been observing of late? After all, many who are presumably old enough to know better now regularly assert that what they want to be true is true, regardless of what the evidence may indicate to the contrary. If they want to win something, they did win, and anyone who contradicts them is part of a conspiracy; anything they fail at was rigged — it must have been, because they’re the greatest thing since free beer and could not possibly ever lose or fail.
And they are whatever they want to be, just by saying they are, because it’s their life, it’s their choice, it’s their prerogative to reinvent themselves in whatever way they want to.
But, wait; maybe it’s the other way around: Maybe it’s the kids’ fault! They have corrupted adults into living in a fantasy world and believing that they can be whatever they desire to be. After all, if you can be Spider-Man simply by putting on a costume and making that assertion, it’s only logical that you can be whichever gender you want to be, too (for example), regardless of the “upholstery” that you were born with (as Jerry Lewis once referred to the physical difference between the sexes). After all, what adult would be silly enough to disavow fundamental truths without being malevolently influenced in such a way? What mature person would take seriously the concept of someone morphing or shape-shifting from one gender to another simply by saying that they have?
And yet many are sillily serious about such claims. Clear thinking and plain logic are dismissed, and truth itself is viewed as elastic, individualized, and cherrypickable. This is not really a new phenomenon, though: Pontius Pilate once cynically inquired, “What Is Truth?”
A much better person than Pilate (Abraham Lincoln) once posited this conundrum: If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have? Some concluded that, if such were the case (if the tail could be counted as a leg), then a dog has five legs. Lincoln’s rebuttal was no, it doesn’t matter what you call a tail, it’s still a tail, not a leg (or anything else).
Another possibility as to who is at fault regarding the preposterous gender confusion now seemingly so rampant is that some “grownups” never actually did grow up, after all; they are still wildly fantasizing — although their bodies have matured, mentally and emotionally they are still in diapers. Their mind is so open that their brains have fallen out.