The Battle to Technologize the Body
2nd May 2023
Typically, Americans can agree on what happened in our mass shootings. Our disagreements have centered on how to stop them. Owing to our biased media’s failure to imagine any other cause or solution, the debate usually boils down to a myopic focus on gun laws. But Nashville was different. The revelation that Hale was a biological woman who requested that people refer to her with he/him pronouns (and the later confirmation that she identified as a trans man) offered a twist. Years prior Hale had been a student at the Covenant School where she launched her attack, a detail that suggested her violence might have been a form of revenge.
These details ensured that the meaning of the massacre was contested. In the conflict over “trans rights,” we are witnessing the beginning of a war. I’m not talking about a metaphorical war or another cold war. It is now plain that wherever you stand in the debate over gender identity, literal acts of violence are unfolding across the nation. Sometimes the bullet is the instrument of destruction. Sometimes it’s the blade. Sometimes the bloodshed is self-inflicted. Sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it’s even elective. But the bloodshed isn’t allegorical. Both sides insist that lives are at stake, and they aren’t wrong.
The battle over trans identity is the first theater in what will be a much larger conflict over technology, the body, and the human essence. Whoever can secure the high ground in these early skirmishes will possess an enormous advantage in the fight for the future. Exploring the mutually exclusive accounts of the Nashville massacre offers a panorama of this bloody war. Although they agree on some basic facts, each account showcases a well-developed worldview and a network of deeply-held values.