Last Friday, 11/20/2015, I came out to my class as a transgender male, in the name of Kantian Ethics. This type of ethics is named for the German philosopher, Immanuel Kant. The basis of his ethic is very similar to the well-known Golden Rule, though his version is worded in the older style of dialect: “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
His version of the Golden Rule is the first of three in The Categorical Imperative. The second one states, “we can’t predict the consequences, so actions must be governed by what is morally right.” The third, and final one is much more blunt, stating, “we can’t use other people as a means to an end.”
The debate we had, where one side was for Kantian Ethics, and the other side was for Utilitarian Philosophy, was sparked because of a short story by Ursula Le Guin, titled, “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.”
The short story is set in this fictional, utopian, town called Omelas. Everything is good, and all the people are happy. There is no need for drug-use, and the town is really up to the reader’s imagination to be described.
But, underneath all this seeming contentment and utopia, a darker secret lies.
In the introduction to this darkness, the author writes, “In a basement under one of the beautiful public buildings of Omelas, or perhaps in the cellar of one of its spacious private homes, there is a room.”
In this room, a child lives in fear and squalor. All the people of Omelas, children and elderly alike, know that this child is there. The child has no name, no discernible gender.
The children of Omelas, usually between the ages of eight and twelve, are told about this child. Sometimes young people come to see the child, and again as adults.
Most times, no matter how this matter has been explained to them, the young people witnessing this child, this pitiful thing, are shocked and sickened.
Again, more often than not, since the young ones are not inherently evil, they would like to do something for the child. But, they cannot.
For, if the poor child were brought up out of that basement...cellar...that horrible dark place, “all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. Those are the terms. to exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of happiness of one: that would be to let guilt within the walls indeed.”
“The terms are strict and absolute; there may not even be a kind word spoken to the child.”
But, there is one thing that may make this realization less terrible and shocking for some: sometimes one of the young boys or girls who has gone to see the child doesn’t go back home. This also happens for older men and women. They just leave. They walk away from Omelas, alone, west or north, towards the mountains. They do not come back. They keep walking.
Being transgender, I feel for this child a lot. But, I also feel, and relate with, the people, young and old, who walk away from Omelas.
When I was seven years old, and still living as a female, I realized that I was different than the other young girls my age. It wasn’t just that I hated having my hair long, wearing anything but sneakers, ripped up jeans, and baggy sweatshirts, and was never a fan of dolls. I just felt, wrong. Not right. But, I didn’t know what it was. I just knew that when my mother called me her little girl, it made my stomach hurt. I thought I was sick. A freak. Why couldn’t I just be my mother’s little girl?
This is where the child at the root of Omelas’s happiness and purity comes in for me. I was living inside of myself. I was the parasite under my own skin. But, I did it to keep my family, and my friends, happy. I stayed quiet. Because, I have always put others before myself. I shut my true self away to keep my own little town in the sun. To keep my own little world spinning on its axis. For, if it were to fall out of orbit, I did not know what would happen, but I did know that it would be bad.
I stayed in the metaphorical “closet” until I was sixteen. Nine long years. Trust me, time moves the slowest for a child. A day can last a thousand years.
But, then, I had had enough. I had my new name, my big-boy-boxers on, and short hair. I was ready. I exploded out of myself in a burst of bright colors. I walked away from the gender norms that society had forced upon me from such a young age, I didn’t even know what they meant. But, on that day, when the angry sixteen year old boy walked away from the childbearing and rearing, the dresses and daughter, mother, sister, I knew that I was never going back.
I knew who I was. Who I had always been. And, my rage was beautiful, and absolute.
http://engl210-deykute.wikispaces.umb.edu/file/view/omelas.pdf
