There is no genderless reality

Each week, The World and Everything in It features a “Culture Friday” segment, in which Executive Producer Nick Eicher discusses the latest cultural news with John Stonestreet, president of the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Here is a summary of this week’s conversation.

Piers Morgan, the liberal TV personality from Britain, gave a politically incorrect rant last week on Good Morning Britain, bemoaning British actress Emma Watson winning MTV’s first gender-neutral acting award. Watson won the MTV Movie Award May 7 for her portrayal of Belle in Disney’s live-action Beauty and the Beast.

“MTV’s move to create a genderless award for acting will mean something different to everyone,” Watson said in her acceptance speech. “But to me it indicates that acting is about the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and that doesn’t need to be separated into two different categories.”

Morgan pointed out practically speaking, the change would mean fewer awards for women and therefore less equality.

“Eventually I’ll have to smash my head repeatedly into a brick wall,” Morgan said. “I think it’s all utterly ridiculous.”

John Stonestreet welcomed Morgan’s dissent from the cultural left.

“I never thought I’d say those words: I agree here with Piers Morgan,” Stonestreet said. He related his recent experience during the birth of his newborn son, Hunter.

“I just watched my wife go through labor for the fourth time. There’s not a man on the planet that can pull that off,” Stonestreet said. “There is a strength to women that men do not have, and there is a strength to men that women do not have. To say that strength has no gender is to deny reality.”

Stonestreet called denying reality and labeling it progress insane.

“You can’t have a play or a movie or a television show that reflects the world without showing the binary that exists in all of our experience,” he said.

Listen to “Culture Friday” on the May 12, 2017, edition of The World and Everything in It.