Transmissions are missions.

We’re living in strange, frightening times. 

There’s the rise of AI and the employment and mental health crises it’s going to bring. There are our dwindling natural resources and the political and humanitarian upheaval that’s going to bring. 

And in the middle of this, for reasons that will forever escape me, we’re arguing about whether men can become women (and vice versa) just by saying so.

I’m not sure whether it’s a sign of how good we have it that using the wrong (read: correct) pronoun to describe somebody is now considered a hate crime. Or a sign of how bad things are that some people see objective reality as their enemy. 

But I’m sure that we can’t solve any of our strange and frightening problems, any of them, if we can’t all agree on simple, uncontroversial matters of fact.

To illustrate this point, I decided to imagine what would happen if we applied this new identity-over-reality approach to other aspects of life. If we were determined to pretend that without an airtight, perfect-in-every-circumstance definition, we couldn’t define anything at all.

It turns out, and this will come as no surprise to some of you, it leads somewhere very, very silly.

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Hey! Nice car!

Excuse me? How dare you?! This isn't a car! It’s a motorbike. Although I prefer the term “bike.”

Wait, what?!

Don't you think I'd know if this was a car?! I drive it. I take care of it. I live with it every day. And I say it’s a bike. Who are you to tell me any different? Are you a mechanic?

No. Sorry, I didn't mean to offend you. It’s just that, well, I mean, look at it! It's obviously a car! 

Oh? And what exactly is so "obvious" about it? What do you even mean by car? Are you talking about its shape? Its legal designation? Its mechanical design? 

Well, for a start, it has four wheels! Bikes have two. 

Haha, so it’s all about wheels, is it, Mr Mechanic?! Ever heard of a three-wheeled car? Or a three-wheeled bike, for that matter? Sometimes bikes have four wheels, sometimes they have five. Sometimes cars have eight. They're all equally valid. Besides, why do you even care how many wheels they have? What's this weird obsession you have with wheels? 

Okay, well, what about the doors?

Oh, so you think any vehicle that has doors is automatically a car? Do you even hear yourself? If I put doors on a bike, does that turn it into a "car"? Do you think a vehicle is just…parts?

Well, no…

Exactly. Besides, some bikes have doors and some "cars" don't. Get over it.

Okay fine. But there are practical differences too, right? For example, if you ride a bike, you need to wear a helmet.

Actually, I'm glad you bought that up. First of all, some “car” drivers also wear helmets. Haven't you ever seen a rally driver? Or a stunt driver?

But more importantly, it’s because narrow-minded bigots like you hate bikers that we're forced to wear helmets when car drivers aren’t. It's discrimination. Plain and simple. But I guess that’s beside the point in this case. Because you seem to think I'm driving a “car.”

No! Look, I don't have any problem with bikers. Some of my best friends are bikers. But bikes and cars are different, right? Bikes are harder to see at night, they’re less stable, they offer less crash protection…

Ohhhh, so now you're saying bikes are inferior?

No! Not inferior! Just different. Bikes are, well, they're more fuel efficient. They accelerate faster. They can weave through traffic jams. But that comes with a few trade-offs. 

Like what?

Well, cars are bigger…

Uh, there’s literally a car called a Mini.

They keep you protected from the elements.

Ever heard of a convertible?

They have airbags.

In 2006 Honda released a production motorcycle with an airbag. So technically, bikes have airbags too. 

So what are you saying? That there’s no difference between cars and bikes?! 

Now, now. Don't try to make me seem unreasonable. Nobody's saying there are no differences! There are differences between all vehicles. I’m saying you can't tell the difference just by looking. There are no criteria for vehicles that are both universal and binary in cars and bikes. Therefore, we can never say which is which. The only way to tell the difference is to ask.

Fine, you win. If you want me to call your four-wheeled, four-seater, two-ton vehicle a “bike,” I guess it has no effect on me.

Thank you. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to have this exact same conversation with the bigots at the Tour de France. 

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Given the issues I mentioned at the top of this piece (and the fact that they’re just the tip of a rapidly melting iceberg), you might reasonably ask why this “silly” issue matters. In fact, “Why do you care?” has become almost as much of a mantra as “trans women are women,” lately.

And I have several answers.

It matters, first of all, because women’s rights matter. We can’t talk about the importance of women’s sports or the needs of disabled and otherwise vulnerable women or why even the Geneva Convention stipulates that male and female prisoners should be accommodated separately, if we don’t know what a woman is.

It matters because children matter. And more to the point, because what matters to children changes as they grow. We can convince children that a jolly old man from the North Pole travels around the Earth delivering presents at 3000 times the speed of sound. We can convince them we’ve removed their nose by sticking our thumb between our fingers. We can convince them that inverting their genitals or cutting off their breasts will make them happy. Maybe we should wait until they’re adults before starting them on that last one.

And last but certainly not least, it matters because reality matters. The ability to use words and share an understanding of what they mean matters. The ability to accept that the world isn’t always as we want it to be matters. The maturity to choose an uncomfortable truth over a comfortable lie matters. 

We’re living in strange, frightening times. Fixing them will need all of us to work together. So if we can’t even agree on what a car is, we’re in deep trouble.