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I recently met a young woman who tells me that she’s neither male nor female. She refuses to use her given female name and wants to be called by a rather generic word.

I like the woman and find her easy to get along with. I call her by the name she prefers and I go out of my way to avoid any discussion related to gender, because I see no need to be confrontational. I have no desire to intentionally offend her if I don’t have to.

What I won’t do, though, is to pretend she’s not a woman. She’s entitled to the bizarre belief which she’s been taught, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to pretend that this gender fantasy is reality.

In this dysfunctional culture, we are regularly lectured that we “hate” people if we refuse to pretend that reality is something which it’s not. The most peculiar part of it is that I feel absolutely no hatred for the people who have bought into “gender theory,” but the social justice warriors of the progressive left regularly express vicious hatred for those like me — those who have a serious and fundamental philosophical difference with them over the nature of reality.

I don’t hate people who call themselves “transgender” or “non-binary” or any of the other dozens of new and unscientific terms. But their leftist supporters hate me because I won’t deny objective reality as I rationally understand it.

And this is why millions of people today are afraid to be very public when they admit that gender is a biological fact, not a “social construct.”

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When I look into a mirror, I sometimes wonder who’s staring back at me. I especially feel that way tonight.

This is what I look like tonight. I just got home. I’m exhausted. I’m sure I look tired. After I fed Lucy and the cats, I put my iPhone in front of my face to snap this photo. I wanted to see if I look as tired as I feel. And I think I do.

At first, I couldn’t figure out why I’m feeling so negative. Being tired isn’t anything unusual, but this feels different. I feel more like someone who’s been stuck at an airport for years waiting to catch a flight — and I’m always disappointed that it hasn’t arrived.

I started thinking about what a friend told me today. He just found out that he has to have some major surgery in a couple of weeks. If he doesn’t fix the serious problem doctors have found, he would very likely die within a few years. Plenty of people have surgery — and face life-threatening problems — every day. But my friend is the same age I am. Maybe that’s why this feels different.

It’s not that I feel old. I just feel stuck. I’m waiting and waiting for my life to begin. But I’ve lost my way. I’ve never felt so alone. And there’s a part of me which fears this will never change.

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I was listening to an interview today with an Oklahoma teacher who helps women trapped in sex-related work — prostitution, stripping, porn. She mentioned that many of the women want out of that world, but they feel stuck. Then she said something that caught my attention.

“A lot of times, that kind of work is very financially lucrative,” she said. “And so, once you start making that kind of money, it’s very, very hard to walk away from.”

For a moment, I had trouble processing what that must be like. Why wouldn’t someone walk away from something which she had come to see as toxic for her life? And then it hit me that I wasn’t so different from these women.

I once did exactly the same thing — but with politics instead of sex work. I’ve joked many times that I’m a recovering political prostitute. For years, I kept doing things that I thought were disgusting, simply because I didn’t want to give up the huge payoff that came with the work.

Just like those women, I was trapped by my own desire for money and success.

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