uite simply, the Sexual Identity Agenda and the Diversity Agenda are at cross-purposes.  The Sexual Identity Agenda tells us that it is simply a mistake to suppose that so small a biological feature as a penis or a vagina should count as defining a person’s sexual identity.  Accordingly, it is oppressive to use the vagina is a criterion for insisting that someone is a female or the penis as a criterion for insisting that someone is a male.  The Diversity Agenda, by contrast, turns a person’s skin color or the like into a sine qua non of the individual’s existence. 

So while a person born with a penis or a vagina is free to have just about any sexual identity he or she pleases, and it is utterly oppressive to think otherwise, a person born with white or black skin is trapped with an ethnic identity that is not of her or his choosing. 

It is a mystery to me how it is that people can have so very much freedom with respect to the choice of sexual identity and so very little freedom with respect to the choice of ethnic identity.  No one has explained this possibility—not even Senator Sheila Kuehl, one of California’s state senators.  Her bill SB 777 seems to think that it is quite oppressive to impose the female-male grid, but not at all oppressive to insist that people are members of this or that ethnic group. 

I would love for someone to explain to me just how this is supposed to work.  So there is this child with a penis who insists upon being called a female, because the person feels like a female.  Acknowledging this is called showing respect for differences. 

Now, imagine a child born in a family that speaks Arab, which has just immigrated to the United States.  The “problem” is that this child insists that he is Hispanic.  Indeed, it is stunning just how well he has mastered Spanish; and with a few adjustments here and there he can in fact pass for being Hispanic.  So would someone explain to me why this child would be considered a traitor to his people—a sell out?  Perhaps Senator Kuehl could explain this to me, since she is very supportive of ethnic diversity. 

That is, she  is very supportive of one form of imposition from the outside, namely the imposition of ethnic identity, but very much against another form of imposition from the outside, namely sexual identity. 

Now, I do not deny that people have all sorts of feelings.  Why, I myself sometimes feel like someone who is truly retarded and sometimes I feel like someone who is a genius.  The evidence, however, makes it clear that I am neither.  Sometimes I feel as if I am amazingly handsome and sometimes I feel as if I am utterly hideous.  Once more, the evidence makes it clear that I am neither.  The point of these utterly boring observations about myself is that there are some aspects of my reality that are not at all determined by my feelings.   

Indeed, Senator Kuehl surely agrees with me, since she thinks that a person’s ethnic identity is not at all determined by how the person feels about herself or himself.  Accordingly, she cannot simply declare without argument independent argument that a person’s sexual identity is not defined by her vagina, on the one hand, or his penis, on the other. 

Of course, how a person goes on to conduct her or his life is another matter entirely.  But anyone with a vagina who feels like a man has to contend with the issue of becoming pregnant; for if nothing else, there is the issue of rape.  And that is the reality of the matter, no matter which bathroom the person wants to use and regardless of the fact that the person never ever wears a dress. 

By contrast, anyone with a penis who feels like a woman has to contend with getting an erection from time to time and the ejaculation of semen.  And that, too, is the reality of the matter, no matter which bathroom the person wants to use and regardless of the fact that  the person only wears dresses. 

While biology is not destiny, it does impose some limits.  Senator Kuehl is a lesbian.  That means she has a rather immutable preference for women.  I have no issue with that at all.  But the issue of getting pregnant was not a non-issue for her; nor was the issue of menopause.  And so it would have been if were she to have insisted that she is a man or that she is beyond the very boundaries of sexual identity. 

Quite simply, then, it is sheer hypocrisy to insist that it is oppressive to hold that genitals bear mightily upon a person’s sexual identity all the while imposing ethnic identity upon folks based upon their skin color and the like.  For surely skin color and the like are far more amorphous than genitalia.  After all, some Arabs are Muslim and some Arabs are Christian.  And that difference is hardly trivial.  Either neither form of identity is anchored in some well of facts over which a person has no control or both are.  Actually, I think that there is an asymmetry here.  But that is another topic.  In any case, there is simply no way at all to suppose that sexual identity has nothing whatsoever to do with facts that are independent of a person’s choices and behavior, but that ethnic identity has everything to do with facts that are independent of the person's choices and behavior.

Another way of putting the point is as follows: Sheila Kuehl is an oppressive person.  She is oppressing individuals by imposing an ethnic identity upon individuals that is based upon facts that they did not choose.  Of course, this charge will no doubt come as a surprise to her, since she almost certainly takes herself to be the very bastion of open-mindedness.  But the facts speak for themselves: The hallmark of Nazi and KKK behavior is that they straight-jacketed people on the basis of such ephemeral features as skin color and the like.  Of course, Senator Kuehl’s excuse might be that such straight-jacketing is commonplace among those who advance the Diversity Agenda.  After all, why one on earth would anyone expect a lesbian promoting complete freedom in terms of sexual identity to see a problem with the Diversity Agenda of imposing stringent restraints in terms of ethnic identity?  That would be expecting way too much in tems of either commonsense or critical thinking.