When Truth Becomes Optional, the Body Becomes Negotiable

How the Denial of Objective Reality Led to the Reinvention of the Human Person

Counterflow with Buck Johnson

We didn’t arrive at gender confusion by accident.

We arrived here by philosophy.

For fifty years we’ve insisted that truth is flexible, reality is constructed, and meaning is assigned — not discovered.

Now we are shocked that the human body is treated the same way.

This is not a culture war.

It is metaphysics catching up with us.

This is now my third piece in a row circling the same fault line — relativism, “nothing is absolute,” the seductive mantra of “my truth.” That repetition is intentional. What we are witnessing culturally is not random confusion. It is the predictable fruit of an idea.

And ideas do not stay abstract.

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The shouting on cable news is low level static noise.

The real revolution happened decades ago — in lecture halls and seminar rooms where “nothing is absolute” passed for sophistication.

Once reality is detached from objective structure, everything becomes negotiable.

If truth is constructed, biological categories are constructed.

If meaning is projected, the body is projectable.

If the self is sovereign, nature must submit.

Relativism didn’t invent gender ideology.

It made it inevitable.

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For most of human history, identity was received.

You were born male or female.

You discovered who you were within a given nature.

The body was not an accessory to the self. It was the self embodied.

Then the order flipped.

Now identity is declared after it is initially “assigned at birth”.

The inner psychological sense of self outranks the visible structure of the body.

Will precedes nature.

Assertion precedes reality.

And here is the line we rarely say out loud:

If the body does not tell the truth about you, nothing does.

Once that premise collapses, stability collapses with it.

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This is not compassion versus cruelty.

It is ontology versus self-assertion.

One vision holds:

• The human person is a unity of body and soul.

• The body is meaningful.

• Sex is a given.

• Truth precedes will.

The other holds:

• The authentic self is inward and psychological.

• The body is interpretive.

• Identity is self-determined.

• Will precedes nature.

Both cannot be true.

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Yes — Suffering Is Real

Gender dysphoria is real distress.

The anguish is not imaginary.

The desire for relief is not trivial.

But suffering does not rewrite ontology.

Sincerity does not generate metaphysics.

Compassion does not require the conclusion that biological reality is optional. In fact, real true compassion doesn’t hide from objective truth.

Care for persons does not require confusion about nature.

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If there is no absolute truth, what limits identity claims?

If identity is self-defined, who arbitrates conflict?

If the body has no intrinsic meaning, why should any physical category remain stable?

Once truth is negotiable, embodiment is negotiable.

And once embodiment is negotiable, the self becomes an endless project.

Endless projects never produce rest. Caving to the ego does not produce healthy fruit.

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Christ did not preach autonomy.

In the Gospel of Matthew He says, “Take my yoke upon you.”

A yoke is not self-invention.

It is alignment.

It binds you to something stronger than yourself.

And in that same Gospel, Christ says:

“No one can serve two masters.” (Matthew 6:24)

Neutrality is not an option.

You will be formed by something.

You will be ordered toward something.

You will serve something.

If you will not serve truth, you will serve appetite.

If you will not be ordered by reality, you will be ordered by desire.

If you reject a yoke, you do not become unyoked.

You simply change masters.

And when the self becomes both servant and master, it fractures. Sometimes very badly.

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Relativism promised liberation from rigid categories.

What it delivered was permanent instability.

If nothing is absolute, identity floats.

If identity floats, the body becomes negotiable.

If the body is negotiable, the self fragments.

A culture that refuses to receive reality must constantly reinvent it.

Reinvention never ends.

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This is not the first place we’ve seen this logic unfold.

In earlier pieces, I argued that when truth becomes subjective, relationships become unstable. If “my truth” overrides reality, trust collapses. Commitment becomes conditional. Words lose weight.

I showed how relativism corrodes public trust. If truth is merely narrative, government becomes theater. Power replaces principle. Citizens stop believing institutions because institutions stop believing in truth. This breeds a weak, appathetic population.

Now we see the same logic applied to the body itself.

The pattern is consistent:

When truth becomes negotiable, trust erodes.

When trust erodes, stability erodes.

When stability erodes, identity erodes.

Relativism does not stay contained.

It moves.

From speech.

To relationships.

To institutions.

To the human person.

And once it reaches the body, there is nowhere deeper for it to go.

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We can conform ourselves to truth.

Or we can demand that truth conform to us.

Christ says we cannot serve two masters.

Either reality has authority over us — or we enthrone ourselves.

There is no third way. We all worship something.

Deny structure long enough, and even your own body becomes a suggestion.

And when the body becomes a suggestion, the self becomes unstable.

Instability is not freedom.

A culture that rejects truth does not become liberated — it becomes self-worshipping in the most exhausting way possible

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It is servitude without admitting you have a master.